Sweden and Italy kick off their World Cup Qualification play-off tie with the first leg on Friday evening, the match will be played at the Friends Arena in Stockholm. The two nations have last met at the 2016 European Championship and back then Italy secured a 1-0 victory thanks to a late goal from Eder. Sweden have not won a match against Italy since 1983 and only managed to avoid defeat in one of the last six matches, all of them played after the year 2000. However, Italy never managed to beat Sweden by more than one goal during that time span.
Sweden did well to finish second in Group A and qualify for this play-off round, considering that France dominated that group and finished at the top of the table. Sweden lost three of their ten qualification matches, but scored more goals than any of the teams in their group: twenty six. Right-back Mikael Lustig is suspended for this match while Jimmy Durmaz might have to settle for a place on the bench because he has not played a full match since September. Sweden have not qualified for the World Cup since 2006.
Italy had a rather disappointing qualification campaign, even though they lost just one of their ten matches. They finished second in their group behind Spain, who beat them 3-0 in September to end their hopes of qualifying automatically. Then Italy were held to a 1-1 draw at home by Macedonia and are now in danger of missing their first World Cup since 1958. Head coach Gian Piero Ventura doesn't have any suspensions or fitness issues to worry about ahead of Friday's match.
Probable line-ups:
Sweden: Olsen - Krafth, Lindelof, Granqvist, Augustinsson - Larsson, Johansson, Ekdal, Forsberg - Toivonen, Berg
Italy: Buffon - Florenzi, Bonucci, Chiellini, Darmian - Candreva, De Rossi, Verratti, Insigne - Immobile, Bellotti
My prediction: Italy to win 2-1.
Here are the odds for the match at Bet365:
Sweden win - 3.50
Draw - 3.10
Italy win - 2.37
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Comments (1)
sharpe
11/19/17, 05:11:26 PM
No doubt the biggest shock of this qualifications and maybe not even in Europe but in general. Sweden are quite good team even without Ibrahimovic in the side and...
No doubt the biggest shock of this qualifications and maybe not even in Europe but in general. Sweden are quite good team even without Ibrahimovic in the side and probably there's a bit of logic they would be on the finals after all. It's a clear disastrous occur for Italy and the won't forget it any time soon.
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