The final matchday in Group A at EURO 2020 kicked off on Sunday night, with Italy playing Wales in Rome and Switzerland taking on Turkey in Baku at the same time. Italy, with two wins from two, had already confirmed qualification to the knockout stages, and so Roberto Mancini made eight changes to his starting XI to give fringe players some game time ahead of the knockout stages. Wales, meanwhile, reverted to the three-man backline they had used against Switzerland in their opening match, with Rob Page leaving out Kieffer Moore, Chris Mepham and Ben Davies since they were all on yellow cards, and another one in this match would lead to a suspension for a potential round of 16 game. Italy dominated the ball as expected in the opening stages but were not able to get in behind the Welsh defence, while Wales had a clear chance from a corner, as Chris Gunter could only head just over the goal from Daniel James’ corner. Italy would take the lead from a set-piece of their own, Marco Verratti sending a low cross towards the near post for Atalanta’s Matteo Pessina to redirect it into the far corner of Danny Ward’s goal with a deft touch. Things went from bad to worse for Wales when Ethan Ampadu was sent off in the second half for a stamp on Federico Bernardeschi’s ankle, which also put them below Switzerland in the suspension points ranking – Switzerland were beating Turkey at this point, and another couple of goals for Italy would mean that Wales would drop into third place in the group. However, Wales managed to hang on to a narrow defeat, and even had a big chance to level things late on but Gareth Bale blazed over the bar. Italy topped the group with three wins out of three, equalling their record winning streak of 30 games as a result, during which time they have only conceded 10 goals, while Wales finished second and will now wait to see who their opponents in the round of 16 are. Check out our EURO 2020 analytics report here which has all the key statistics and visualisations from this match.
