Euro 2020 : Italy – Austria

One of the major contenders at the Euro 2020 Italy face Austria at the Wembley Stadium in a match from the 1/8-finals of the competition. Let’s preview it right now.

Italy are looking just flawless since the beginning of the European Championship. The Azzurri won all of their three matches in Group A and didn’t concede a single goal for 270 minutes of playing. Roberto Mancini’s team is looking like one of favorites for the trophy because they do really well in all aspects of the game right now – they are perfect in defense, very solid in midfield and they scored seven goals in the three matches so far.

The best news for Mancini and the Italian fans is the return of Marco Verratti. PSG’s midfielder missed the first two games because of injury, but he played the 90 minutes during the 1-0 win over Wales. Verratti is arguably going to be one of Italy’s key players in the race for the Euro 2020 trophy.

Austria surprised a lot of people by reaching the Euro 2020 1/8-finals. It was believed that they are underdogs in their group, but at the end Das Team achieved two wins and for a first time in their history they reached the knockout phase of the European Championship.

In their third game in Group C Austria faced Ukraine in Bucurest and managed to record a 1-0 win. Hoffenheim’s Christoph Baumgartner became the hero for Das Team by scoring the winning goal in the 21th minute. Baumgartner got assisted by the captain David Alaba and put the ball in the net behind the goalkeeper Georgiy Buschchan’s back. Surely it was one of the most important goals of the Austrian national team in recent years.

That’s our preview for the Euro 2020 1/8-finals clash between Italy and Austria at the Wembley on Saturday. Is Das Team capable of making a surprise against the Azzurri? It’d be very difficult.