France vs Italy Predictions

• France have won five of their last six home games
• Les Bleus have won four of the last five head-to-heads
• Italy are ranked 12 places below their hosts by FIFA

Favourites France too strong for Italy

After 14 years of Didier Deschamps at the helm, France have started the Zinedine Zidane era with back-to-back 1-0 wins over Turkey and Belgium.

They face Italy in their third outing on Friday, with the Azzurri fresh from a 4-1 success over the Crescent-Stars. Before that though, Italy had lost 2-0 to Belgium and their recent record against these opponents is poor. Les Bleus have won four of the last five head-to-heads and are a short price to extend that run at home.

A key aspect of France’s success is the sheer wealth of attacking talent that they have at their disposal and even with Kylian Mbappe absent, Michael Olise stepped up to provide a moment of magic against the Red Devils.

While they may have only scored twice in this international break, the French can never be discounted from cutting loose and this could be a more open affair.

The last five meetings between these two have gone over 2.5 goals and this could be another case of European heavyweights going toe to toe.

Italy may have beaten Turkey 4-1 but they did allow 2.89 expected goals and could be vulnerable. Take France to win and over 2.5 goals.

Both teams have scored in eight of the last ten meetings between these two and a 2-1 home win is the correct score pick.