Italy kick off their U20 world cup campaign today with a tough fixture with Uruguay, who topped the South America qualification tournament earlier this year. The match will see recent signing Rodrigo Bentancur line up against a number of his fellow juventini.
Mattia Vitale (CM) – Cesena
Francesco Cassatta (Cm/AM) – Ascoli
Riccardo Orsolini (RW) – Ascoli
Filippo Romagna (CB) – Brescia
Andrea Favilli – (CF) – Ascoli
Rolando Mandragora (DM/CM) – Juventus
All selected for Italy U20 squad
Other teams in our group are the Japs, who qualified through winning the U19 Asian Football Federation Championship and South Africa who earned their entry through finishing 4th in the U20 African Cup of Nations. I would expect us to challenge for top spot, yet Uruguay are serious contenders.
At least we avoided Mbappe’s France, who smashed Italy 4-0 in the final of the European U19 tournament last July. Who probably emerge from my brief analysis as favourites for the title,with Rodrigo’s Uruguay as the dark horse. I would have included a lively, typically aggressive Argentina in my predicted winners routine, but they were mauled by my motherland of England 3-0 yesterday in their opening fixture! Plenty of time to recover, and they will assuredly despatch with Guinea then need to put the host nation to the sword to sneak through to the knock-out stage.
I shall endeavour to provide updates as the tournament progresses, until all Juve players are eliminated or win the damn thing.
Forza Azzurri
TGP
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Would love to follow this live, but I can’t. Are there any Juve youngsters elsewhere or are they all in the Italy squad? (Plus Bentancur in Uruguay)
As mentioned, my friend, I would place Bentancur’s crowd as second favourites after the gallic imps…They were superb in the South American qualifiers, easily topping the group with only the Argies offering them any challenge in a very heated exchanged…I remember seeing a tackel on Rodrigo which was nothing short of assault.
i expect Italy to beat the Japs and South Africans to qualify, then it will be a matter of avoiding France!