Italy and Turkey finally get Euro 2020 underway on Friday evening in Rome, one year after the tournament was initially meant to take place.
Although there will be a heavily reduced capacity at the Stadio Olimpico, expectations are reasonably high that Italy can have a good tournament.
Roberto Mancini’s men are unbeaten for 27 games and are the favourites to come top in a group consisting of Turkey, Switzerland and Wales.
Italy go into this opening match missing only one first-team player. Marco Verratti has still not recovered from the knee injury he sustained last month with PSG.
However, they have suffered two further injury blows this week as midfielders Stefano Sensi and Lorenzo Pellegrini were both forced out of the Euro 2020 squad and replaced by Matteo Pessina and Gaetano Castrovilli.
Gigi Donnarumma will start in goal and hope to be fully focused despite his imminent free transfer to PSG.
Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci will form an experienced centre back duo, with Alessandro Florenzi and Leonardo Spinazzola as full-backs.
Manuel Locatelli will continue to fill in for Verratti in midfield alongside other regular starters Jorginho and Nicolo Barella.
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Completing the 4-3-3 formation, there are a couple of question marks.
Lorenzo Insigne will certainly start on the left, while Domenico Berardi seems set to be selected ahead of Federico Chiesa on the right after his recent impressive performances for the national team.
As for the central striker role, Ciro Immobile’s superior form in recent weeks means that he could get the nod ahead of Andrea Belotti in attack.
As for Turkey, they will be spearheaded by veteran striker Burak Yilmaz, who is coming off a title-winning season in France.
His Lille team-mates Zeki Celik and Yusuf Yazici will also start, as will star man Hakan Calhanoglu of AC Milan.
Caglar Soyuncu and Juventus’ Merih Demiral will forge a mean-looking centre back pairing.
