Preview Italy vs Albania 15.06.2024

Signal Iduna Park in Dortmund will host the match between Italy and Albania on Saturday evening from 20:00, a match that is part of group B of the European football championship, Euro 2024, which takes place in Germany from June 14 to July 14 2024. The two teams, along with Spain and Croatia, make up one of the most balanced groups from this final tournament, many considering group B the strongest because there are three national teams of close value. Returning to the history of direct confrontations between Albania and Italy, we count four previous such confrontations, two friendly matches, the first in 2014 and the last in 2022, and two other confrontations took place in the World Cup 2018 preliminaries, all four matches being won by Italy.

Italy is the European champion in 2020, when due to the pandemic, the final tournament was postponed for 1 year and was played in 2021, and in the final at Wembley, Italy defeated England 2-1 after the kicks from 11m. Italy wants to repeat the performance of Spain, the only team that won the European title twice in a row, but it will be quite difficult to achieve this goal. Italy missed out on the 2022 World Cup after being eliminated by North Macedonia at the pool, which is also a big disappointment for Italy's fans. Even the qualification for this final tournament was not devoid of emotions, Italy qualifying after obtaining the 2nd place in group C, after England, but tied with Ukraine, occupying the 3rd place, Italy's advantage being the round match won against Ukraine with 2-1. Italy obtained positive results in the four friendly matches played this year, recording three victories and a draw. For Italy, the match against Spain in the group will follow, a match almost like a final of the final tournament.

Italy possible line-up: Donnarumma; Darmian, Buongiorno, Bastoni; Di Lorenzo, Jorginho, Cristante, Dimarco; Frattesi, Chiesa; Scamacca

Albania is in front of its 3rd participation in the European Championship after Euro 1964 and Euro 2016. So far Albania has not managed to get out of the groups, but managed a victory at Euro 2016, when in the last match of the group defeated Romania 1-0 and ranked 3rd after France and Switzerland. Albania had a very good course in the preliminaries, managing to finish in first place in group E, in front of better rated national teams such as the Czech Republic and Poland. Albania registered only one defeat in the preliminaries, in the very first match, when they lost 1-0 to Poland, after which seven unbeaten games followed with four wins and three draws. Before the final tournament, Albania played two friendly matches with Liechtenstein and Azerbaijan, achieving two victories, 3-0 and 3-1.

Albania possible line-up: Berisha; Hysaj, Djimsiti, Ajeti, Mitaj; Asllani, Ramadani, Bajrami; Seferi, Asani, Broja

Photo credit: Uefa.com

Prediction: Italy WIN @ 1.40