Austria

The Austrian team is not considered one of the tournament favorites nor one of the underdogs. The Austrian national team can be called a strong middle-tier team, with quite a few talented players from the top European football leagues.

Predicted starting lineup for Austria in the match against North Macedonia: Bachmann; Lainer, Dragovic, Hinteregger, Ulmer; Laimer, X Schlager; Sabitzer, Baumgartner, Alaba; Arnautovic.

Among these players, we can highlight two who should be the main leaders of the Austrian team: David Alaba (Bayern Munich) and Marcel Sabitzer (RB Leipzig). Alaba will likely be seen on the left flank, while Sabitzer should take on the role of central forward.

Will the third time be the charm?

This will be the third European Championship for the Austrian team. In the first two, this team fell in the group stage, but both the team representatives and players believe that this year might be the time when the team finally manages to overcome the group stage barrier.

Although Austria is considered the favorite by bookmakers in this match, the team's form raises doubts. The Austrian national team will play this match without having won any of their last 3 international matches, losing 2 and drawing 1. The Austrians lost 4-0 to Denmark, 1-0 to England, and drew 0-0 with Slovakia.

North Macedonia

The North Macedonian team should enter this match with a more positive mood, as their form before this championship looked somewhat better compared to the Austrian team.

In the last 5 matches played, North Macedonia won 3, lost 1, and drew 1. Interestingly, considered an absolute “underdog” in the away match against Germany, North Macedonia, for which a 21 coefficient was given for a win in that match, managed to win 2-1 and defeat the German team on their own field.

Before this championship, North Macedonia played 2 friendly matches: a 1-1 draw with Slovenia and a 4-0 thrashing of Kazakhstan's national team.

Predicted lineup for North Macedonia in this match: Dimitrievski; Velkovski, Musliu, Ristevski; Ristovski, Nikolov, Ademi, Elmas, Alioski; Pandev, Trajkovski

The importance of a good start

North Macedonia's improvement in recent years is partly due to the fact that this team plays energetically and actively in the first minutes of the match, looking for opportunities to score goals. North Macedonia scored the first goal in 10 of their last 14 international matches.

Igor Angelovski's team won all 10 matches in which they scored first. The last opponent to defeat North Macedonia after conceding the first goal was the Austrian team, which the Macedonians played against in the Euro 2020 qualifiers.

Prediction

Both teams understand well that the loser of this match will have practically no real chances of advancing to the next stage, as both Ukraine and especially the Netherlands are much tougher opponents. Although the Austrian team is not usually a high-scoring team, defense is certainly not the strong suit of the North Macedonian team, so the Austrians, having a strong forward line, should take advantage of the opportunities to score goals. We can expect 2-3 goals in this match, so the currently offered 1.85 coefficient for over 2 goals by bookmakers looks really good, especially since with 2 goals the bet money would be returned.