Our experts don’t predict many goals in an exciting clash between Portugal and Italy.
Football. UEFA Nations League. League A
Kick-off: September 10, 21:45
Venue: Estadio da Luz, Lisbon
Forecast: ТU (2.5)
Best odds: 1.57* – Marathonbet.
Result: 1:0 (bet won)
Portugal
Portugal are far from their hardly best performance in Russia, got cut off the 1/8 final. Santos certainly was not satisfied with the result. The team also drew 1-1 with Croatia in a friendly match last week. They performed much better than the rival, but lost some attack opportunities.
Probably it’s because Cristiano Ronaldo with a couple of other players , who took part in the Mundial are going to be absent in this matchup. Anyway, major sportsbooks are making their predictions for Portugal vs Italy in favour of the hosts.
Italy
Italy dramatically failed their chance to get into the World Cup, so now Roberto Mancini really had some work to do. First of all he made some changes in the lineup:
The squad literally averted defeat in the recent friendly matchup with Poland 1-1 just thanks to a dummy penalty by Błaszczykowski.
Mancini’s men looked worse than the opponent, and if the managers sit and do nothing, the clash with Portugal will end no better.
Predicted Lineups:
Portugal: Patricio, Cancelo, Pepe, Dias, Rui, Neves, Carvalho, Silva, Guedes, Silva, Bruma, Bernardo, Sanches, Neto
Italy: Criscito, Cristante, Chiesa, Donnarumma, Zappacosta, Bonucci, Jorginho, Bonaventura, Bernardeschi, Belotti
Prediction
We believe TU (2.5) would succeed because:
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- only 2 out of 6 last meetings of these teams ended with more than 2 goals
- Italy certainly have attacking issues as well as Portugal owing to the absence of Ronaldo and other players
Talking about the probable winner of the meeting, Portugal is first on the list and it’s amply justified. We predict the score to be 1:0.
