TipResumen

INTRODUCTION

Portugal the current European Champions take on Italy who failed to qualified for the last World Cup. Portugal will be playing their first match in the League of Nations, while Italy started off with a 1-1 draw with Poland three days ago.



PORTUGAL

Portugal beat France in the Euro 2016 to become European Champions. In the World Cup they were eliminated in the last 16 after they were beaten by Uruguay 2-1. So now coach Santos wants them to do better in the League of Nations even though they will be without some very important players for this match. They will not have the services of Cristiano Ronaldo who was left out by Coach Santos so that he can prepare for the Champions League with Juventus. Ronaldo was also out of the side that drew with Croatia in a friendly last week by 1-1. Portugal took the lead thanks to Pepe's goal in the 32nd minute. In that match Coach Santos also gave the chance to some fringe players to get a chance to play, but now they will field their strongest lineup apart from Ronaldo.



ITALY

Three days ago they could only managed a 1-1 draw with Italy in their first match in the League of Nations. Poland took the lead through Zielinski, but then in the 78th minute of the match Italy scored through Jorginho from the penalty spot. At the moment Italy under the guidance of coach Mancini is struggling to return to their old self when they were a fearful side. They failed to qualify for the World Cup in Russia, which was also the very first time they failed to qualify for such a big competition. They brought on coach Mancini in May this year to rectify that who immediately started to rejuvenate the team. Now they are likely to make a lot of changes for this match against Portugal especially since they have a lot of absences through injuries.



PAST MEETINGS

The last time these two sets met was three years ago in a friendly match in Switzerland’s Geneva and Portugal won by 1-0.