North Macedonia
Italy
On September 9, National Arena Toshe Proeski (Skopje) will host the match of the 5th round of the Euro 2024 Qualification, in which North Macedonia will compete with Italy. The battle will start at 20:45 CET.
North Macedonia
The team represents a rather small “fragment” of former Yugoslavia. Still, it has already succeeded in what the more status-minded Bosnia failed to do – the debut at the Euro. The Nations League helped “the Eagles” in that case, because one of the additional trips was played among the outsiders – Pandev and the company won that play-off. It was pretty logical that Goran and the company lost all the fights at the tournament. Still, it is reasonable to mention that those results were followed by a worthy next qualifying round, losing only to Germany (which had been beaten) at the group stage, and, speaking about the play-off, the team sensationally knocked out Italy in the away confrontation. Nevertheless, Portugal, which won the decisive match at the home arena, did not let it go to the World Cup. As for the new cycle, Milevski’s wards, having won the battles against Malta in March as well as the struggle with Faroe Islands in a test match, started with victories. Leading with a 2-0 score at half-time in June, the team was defeated by Ukraine on the native field, after which there happened a 0-7 failure in the match with England.
Italy
The team was suddenly left without a coach in the summer. Mancini proved that money is a priority for him once again: he literally quit his position for the sake of an outright “sinecure” from Saudi Arabia. And Roberto left contradictory estimates of his work at the head of “the Squadra Azzurra”. It goes without saying that there was a well-deserved victory at the Euro 2020, although Donnarumma also had to win penalty shoot-outs twice in the decisive rounds. At the same time, he did not bring the favourite to the next World Cup (despite the fact that the World Cup of 2018 was also missed!). As for 2023, he managed to lose both to England at the home qualification and to Spain in the 1/2 finals of the Nations League. This time, it remains to believe that Spalletti will cope with the task. Generally speaking, it is not the most difficult one, if we take into account the fact that two best teams of the group go to the Euro.
The statistics of head-to-head matches
The opponents played only 3 matches in total, and Italy won only the first of them, in 2016. There was a draw a year later and the sensational 1-0 score in the play-offs of the World Cup in favour of an outsider, which has already been mentioned.
Predictions
Bookmakers believe that the hosts have no chance for success. This is a debut for Spalletti, let’s believe that his new wards will win with “a -1.5 goal handicap” (odd: 2.03).
