USA Takes On Italy in U-20 World Cup Round of 16 | OneFootball

Kickoff: 3:30pm ET Broadcast on FS2 (English) & Universo (Spanish)Streaming on Amazon Prime (English) & Peacock (Spanish)

The United States U-20 team will face Italy this afternoon in Talca, Chile in the final match day of U-20 World Cup’s Round of 16.

Form

The Americans enter this fixture after suffering a shock defeat to South Africa 2 – 1 in their final group stage match. They still finished atop Group E, however, with strong wins over New Caledonia (9 – 1) and France (3 – 0).

Italy limped into second place in Group D with a win, draw and loss. An early penalty gave them the edge over Australia, whom they defeated 1 – 0. Then they stumbled against Cuba, conceding two late penalties and allowing one of the historically weakest sides in the tournament to draw level 2 – 2.

Strategy

Both teams like to score early. For the USA, 60% of goals have occurred in the first half. For Italy this is 100%. Defensively, both sides are stingy and have allowed a grand total of three. Interestingly, all of Italy’s concessions happened in the final 15 minutes of regulation, but this doesn’t mean the U.S. should take a cautious approach.

Getting out on the front foot should be the U.S. plan. Look for ex-Inter Miami (now Parma) midfielder Benjamin Cremaschi to be the general pulling the strings, with Real Salt Lake’s Zavier Gozo supporting. Gozo’s teammate Marcos Zambrano has squandered four big scoring chances; he must bury any that come his way today. Wing-back Frankie Westfield should return to the starting eleven after sitting out the South Africa match. He was sorely missed in that game.

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