European Youth Championship Preview Score Forecast: Italy vs Romania

The European Youth Championship will officially open today. Italy and host Slovakia, the last runner-up Spain and the European Youth Championship dark horse Romania were divided into Group A. Let’s take a look at the competition between Italy U21 and Romanian U21.

The two teams have never met in the World Championships before. Although both teams are regular visitors to the European Youth Championship, they have not met in the group stage or even in the knockout stage in the past few decades, so today's showdown has a certain sense of mystery for both sides. In addition, Italy has lost five consecutive games, while Romania can always create unpopularity, so today's Italian supporters are not as many as they imagined.

But then again, there are still many differences between the youth team's competition and the adult national team. So at this age, what aspects should we pay more attention to when studying the competition? Let’s follow the steps of the country and make an objective analysis.

For the youth team, determining the team's competitive level mainly depends on the following two points. The first point is whether the player is selected and the tactics of the head coach. Compared with other age groups, players at this stage all have a heart that wants to become superstars, but how can they grow into stars? Of course, they have to play more games, so in order to get a chance to play during the club game, they strictly implement the coach's tactics. When they come to the national team, whether it is the Italian U21 or the Romanian U21, the players do not have to doubt the execution of tactics.

However, whether the selected players can fully realize the coach's tactical intentions needs to be viewed objectively. Let's talk about Italy first. Unlike the 3-back and 5-backs used by the adult team, the Italian U21 national team has always adopted a 4312 formation. On the offensive end, they advocate the combination of side and middle, and use the skillful two-pass and one-on-one cooperation to obtain offensive opportunities. In the counterattack, they prefer to hit the opponent behind more decisively through straight passes in the middle. When defending, the Italian U21 has a very dense position, especially the defense in the middle is airtight. The position battle has always maintained a record of zero conceded goals in the qualifiers, and it ranks second in the defensive rankings of all teams.

Because they were eliminated in the group stage of the last European Youth Championship, Italy attached great importance to the results this time, and began to select personnel in April this year. In order to implement the above tactical ideas, they selected straight pass ball master Baldanzi from Rome, and took away the running striker Niotto from Leeds United. In order to deal with the passing and control tactics of Romania and Spain in the group stage, they also summoned Bologna's steal master Fabian and Cagliari's Prati under their command. The coaching staff's good intentions can be seen with the naked eye.

And in Romania, why can they always achieve better results in the youth competition? The main reason is that their lineup teams are formed by the Romanian local league Bucharest Rapid and Bucharest Stars. Most players play together all year round, so everyone has a very good cooperation, which also brings their offensive and defensive efficiency to the extreme.

But there is a problem at present. Romanian U21 has always played the pass control tactics based on the 433 formation and high-level oppression. However, Bucharest quickly changed the coach this year, and its playing style changed to crossing from the wing, while Bucharest star changed from the 433 formation to the 4231 formation this year, focusing on counterattack. Therefore, it will take time to check whether the players selected by Romania can achieve a rapid change in tactical thinking in this international competition.

The second point is speed. In the youth team's game, the way to solve problems is often simple. Young players have insufficient experience and are easy to get rid of. A stolen or a rapid change of direction can leave the defensive players behind. At this point, the Italian U21 has a clear advantage today. The main forwards Niotto, Ambrocino, and Cleosha all have the starting speed of one in a hundred. In addition, the two central defenders of the Romanian U21 are above 190cm tall, and their turning speed disadvantage will inevitably be infinitely amplified.

Based on the above two points, it is not difficult to see that although Romania has a dark horse that cannot be underestimated, they still have the natural suppression of tactics in the face of Italy, and it is not difficult to get upset. Therefore, in the first round of the European Youth Championship, we should still expect the Italian U21 to successfully score 3 points.