Dugout Discussion – Italy vs Spain

The Round of 16 is concluded today with a couple more fixtures for Fantasy managers to consider.

First up at 5pm, Italy take on Spain for the right to meet Germany in the quarter-finals.

Both sides will be looking to bounce back from respective defeats to Republic of Ireland and Croatia in the final round of group matches.

Having swept aside Belgium and Sweden in their first couple of fixtures, Antonio Conte’s men will be confident of overcoming the defending champions, though will need to make do without the injured Antonio Candreva this afternoon.

The stats are somewhat in Spain’s favour for this one, though. Despite scoring just once more than The Azzurri so far, Vicente del Bosque’s side fired more than double the number of attempts on goal (51 to 25) and have allowed their opponents just 27 attempts on goal compared to Italy’s 34.