Italy (7th) v Switzerland (13th), Wed 16th June 20:00

After having a slightly shaky start in the tournament curtain raiser, the Italians eventually got the breakthrough against Turkey in the 53rd minute. They didn’t stop there either, as both Ciro Immobile and Lorenzo Insigne opened their account for the competition and they look like they’ll be an extremely hard team to beat.

Switzerland were left a frustrated figure after Euro 2016 semi-finalists Wales managed to come from behind to grind out a 1-1 draw. They’ll have to improve on that performance in order to get anything against this ferocious Azzurri outfit, but they can take confidence in the fact they’re unbeaten now in eight matches since Belgium beat them in a friendly back in November last year. That does include fixtures with Spain (1-1), Ukraine (3-0), Finland (3-2) and the USA (2-1), but none of those sides are quite at the level of their hosts.

Roberto Mancini’s men have now gone nearly 15 hours of football without conceding a single goal, while they’re on a 28- game unbeaten run, winning each of the last nine. That is an impressive record but certainly helped by the quality of opposition they have faced over that time. However, their two most recent victories over Czech Republic (4-0) and Turkey (3-0) show they mean business.

The Swiss when visiting the current top-50 outfits in the FIFA World Rankings have lost seven of their 10 trips over the last three years, losing by exactly one goal in all but one of those defeats. Interestingly, they were only behind at the break in three of those matches and so we’d expect them to be hard to break down at least.

The Azzurri haven’t been cruising past everyone in their path, going just W5-D5 from their last 10 matches against the sides ranked between 10th and 30th in the world, but they remain resilient against those better sides still, conceding just three times across those games and winning by exactly one goal in three.

The bottom line for us in this game is that the Italians have won 17 of their 25 unbeaten outings now in their home country since the start of 2017, including each of the last six without conceding a goal. They are without a doubt the better side in this one and although we’d expect the visitors to put up a fight, it’ll likely be in vain.

Italy One Goal Winning Margin @ 3.6
0.5 Pts: Italy Win to Nil @ 2.5