Belgium - Italy, Euro 2020 preview and prediction

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The Euro 2020 quarter-finals kick off this Friday at 10pm. All football fans in Lithuania will be treated to a battle of two football giants. Italy and Belgium, who have never lost in this tournament before, will face each other after a 5-year break when they played each other at the 2016 European Championship, with Italy winning 2-0. We'll take a look at the two teams, the highlights and our predictions for this match, so stay tuned.
Belgium

Belgium

T. Hazard's spectacular strike at the end of the first half led the Belgian team to victory over the now former European champions, Portugal. The match against Portugal could have been even better if it had not been for the injuries suffered by two of the team's most important players, K. De Bruyne and E. Hazard, who were injured in the second period.

Belgium's victory over Portugal was their 14th in a row, counting European Championship qualifiers and Euro 2020. What's more, Belgium has scored at least one goal in 34 consecutive matches and has won 23 of the last 27 games played. The Belgians started the group stage in fine form, but the further they went, the more it seemed that the Belgian curve of the game did not go up, but rather stagnated, if not even deteriorated a little bit.

Against Denmark, Belgium looked completely unprepared in the first half, but showed character and came back to win the match 2-1. In the match against Portugal, the first half fiasco was avoided, but if it wasn't for a spectacular strike by T. Hazard, we would probably say that the Portuguese team had more chances in the first half of the match and showed a better game. In fact, the Belgians were fortunate that the Portuguese didn't take many good chances in the second half of the game, because without K. De Bruyne and E. Hazard, the game went into extra time and there were many chances that we would be writing about Portugal - Italy now.

Italy Euro 2020

Italy

After an impressive performance in the group stage, almost everyone - football fans and sports analysts alike - expected Italy to have no problems with a mediocre Austrian team in the group stage and to comfortably reach the quarter-finals. However, the Austrian team just missed a couple of centimetres to get a goal that would have counted and Italy would have been 1-0 behind just before the end of normal time. As we continue, there are no more questions about which team is better - the Italians have proved their superiority and are through to the quarter-finals.

The Italians have scored 9 goals in 4 matches at this championship, and the goal against Austria was the first in the last 11 games. The last time the Italians lost an international match was in 2018, so it's a fact that this team is in impressive form right now. No player in the Italian squad has scored more than 2 goals, and several players have scored one goal each. This shows that the Italians are sharing the ball well and finding the best possible opportunity to strike, no matter which player gets the chance.

Predicted starting line-ups:

Belgium:
Courtois; Alderweireld, Vermaelen, Vertonghen; T. Hazard, Witsel, Tielemans, Meunier; Mertens, Lukaku, Carrasco;

Italy:
Donnarumma; Di Lorenzo, Bonucci, Chiellini, Spinazzola; Barella, Jorginho, Verratti; Chiesa, Immobile, Insigne.

Forecast

Predicting which team will go through to the semi-finals is very difficult. Both teams have more pluses than minuses and it will depend on who can handle the pressure better and impose their own style of play. The reason why the Italian team is considered the favourite in this match is that De Bruyne and Hazard are likely to miss the match, which the Belgian team will need in order to win. The Italians have a good chance to take advantage of the situation and advance to the semi-finals.

Italy to win, 2,35 kof., betsafe

More than 2.5 goals, 2.37 kof., betsafe

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