Italy vs Albania Prediction: Title defense begins for the European champions

Signal Iduna Park will host the final game of the day two encounter of the Euro 2024 competition. In this Group B encounter, Italy will play Albania as both teams hope to start their season with a win. How will they react here?

Italy will head into this game with confidence as they look to begin their title defense. In their last Euro, Italy played England in the final and they settled for a draw at full time. However, a penalty win was enough to see this team win that game.

In their encounters to this stage of this competition, Italy had an unbeaten run of six games where they defeated Bosnia & Herzegovina, Ecuador, Venezuela, and North Macedonia. However, their games against Turkey and Ukraine ended in goalless draws. 

Albania's journey to this Euro was a good one, and this team will hope they can deliver in this opener. In the qualification round, Albania finished top of Group E with 15 points, the same as the second-placed Czech Republic. In their matches, Albania scored 12 goals while conceding 4. 

In their recent games, Albania picked up consecutive wins against Azerbaijan and Liechtenstein in games that ended 3-1 and 3-0. In the meantime, they lost to Sweden and Chile in games that ended 1-0 and 0-3. While they have not won a game against Italy in recent times, Albania will look to make history and show they are up to the task here. 

Italy Possible Starting Lineup:

Donnarumma; Di Lorenzo, Buongiorno, Bastoni, Dimarco; Cristante, Jorginho; Frattesi, Pellegrini, Chiesa; Scamacca

Albania Possible Starting Lineup:

E. Berisha; Hysaj, Ismajli, Djimsiti, Mitaj; Asllani, Ramadani; Asani, Bajrami, Seferi; Broja

Italy are in a tough position, and this game is their best chance to at least make it out of the group stage. Albania entered this competition with consecutive victories, which should be a confidence boost for them. However, Italy have a better squad and a better team and should win this game, even though I expect Albania to net.