Italy vs San Marino Prediction & Match Preview

Steffen Schmidt - May 26, 2021

Italy vs San Marino
International Friendlies,
Friday, 28 May 2021
Kick-off 19:45 UK/ 20:45 CET
Venue: Sardegna Arena.

Sardegna Arena will host Italy’s inaugural pre-Euro 2020 test on Friday evening when the national team of San Marino come to visit Cagliari. Italy obviously go into the game as enormous favorites against the neighboring country.

Roberto Mancini has managed to shift Italy’s fortunes around since taking charge in 2018. The former Manchester City manager initiated a massive resurgence in Italy after the four-time World Cup winners failed to qualify for the 2018 tournament in Russia.

Italy have thus gone 25 straight games without a defeat, winning as many as 20 of them in the process.

Azzurri will go into this on the back of six subsequent clean sheets. They only shipped a single goal in the last ten matches (courtesy of Donny van de Beek in a 1-1 draw against the Netherlands).

San Marino are the perennial whipping boys of football and they are frequently considered as the worst national team in the history of sports.

They have not won a single competitive game in their history. Their lone victory came back in 2004 when San Marino dispatched fellow minnows Liechtenstein 1-0 in a friendly.

While the birth of the UEFA Nations League gave San Marino an opportunity to lock horns with teams of a similar quality, they failed to do anything more than snatching a couple of goalless draws against Liechtenstein and Gibraltar recently.

Italy vs San Marino Head-to-head

• This will be the fourth head to head encounter between the two sides.
• Italy claimed commanding wins by at least four goals difference in each of the last three games, without conceding a single goal at the opposite end along the way.
• The most recent clash, played exactly four years ago at Empoli’s stadium, saw a demolishing 8-0 victory for the Italians.

Italy vs San Marino Prediction

San Marino lost 44 and drew 2 (to Liechtenstein and Gibraltar) of the last 46 outings. They have failed to score a goal in ten successive matches and they’ve notched no more than a single goal in the last 27 games.

This is just one of two tests for the Italians before they begin their Euro 2020 campaign against Turkey. The players will be highly motivated to prove their worth ahead of the major tournament. In such circumstances, we would not be surprised to see a demolishing victory for the Italians, similar to the one they recorder when they last played the minnow neighbors.

Italy vs San Marino Betting Tips

• Italy to win in -5.5 Asian Handicap @ 2.00 odd

• Over 2.5 goals in the first half @ 2.10 odd.