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Arun - June 7, 2021
Czech Republic vs Albania
Friendly
Date: Tuesday, 8 June 2021
Kick-off at 19:15 UK/ 20:15 CET
Venue: Generali Ceska pojistovna Arena (Prague).
Czech Republic welcomes Albania for their final warm-up match before heading to the Euro 2020.
The Czechs were given a thorough battering in the previous friendly by Italy, putting 4 goals past them. They want to put this behind and finish off strong here with the likes of England, Croatia and Scotland waiting in the group phase.
While the result against Italy is no surprise, the margin of defeat is rather unexpected. Especially when their form coming into the friendlies have been good.
They started off strong in the World Cup qualifiers in March with wins over Estonia (6-2) and then held a strong Belgium to 1-1 stalemate before the unlucky narrow loss to Wales (0-1) where they played with 10-men in the second half.
And by November 2020, they finished top of their UEFA Nations League group and earned promotion to Group A.
On the other hand, Albania will be looking to build up for the World Cup qualifiers in September and they are coming here on the back of a 0-0 draw against Wales.
The 66th FIFA ranked team had little success against teams ranked above them, while Czech Republic ranked 40 often manage to get on top against such opponents.
This will be the first ever head-to-head meeting between the two teams.
The Czech Republic football team has plenty of quality at their disposal with their squad dominated by players coming from domestic success with Sparta Prague. While the likes of Patrick Schick (Leverkusen), Tomas Soucek (West Ham) and Vladimír Darida (Hertha) are a few who can turn matches on their own.
Moreover, their form on home soil is nothing but excellent. Only Brazil, Scotland and Northern Ireland managed to return with victories in the last 2 years.
Albania’s only success against a higher ranked team over the last 15 months came against Iceland (4-2) in September 2019.
At the same time, they managed to keep the scoreline decent as we can see from the defeats to France (0-2) and most recently to England (0-2) in March.
To sum up, Czech Republic have an excellent chance to bounce back to winning ways and earn some confidence heading into Euro 2020. Yet, this will be a tough and scrappy game, but win of any margin is welcome under these circumstances.
Czech Republic to win @ 1.57 odd
Under 2.5 goals @ 1.44 odd.
