Ireland U21 VS Israel U21

Ireland U21 welcome Israel U21 for this EURO U21 Qualification promotion final first leg at Tallaght Stadium in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, early Saturday morning Beijing time. The stakes are high here and I predict pretty cautious, defensive football here, especially early on in the game. Even if one team takes the lead - the team chasing will probably not take too big risks as this is only the first leg. In my view the goal expectancy is smaller here than the betting market, and a draw would certainly not be a surprise at all.. The probability if this result is 32%. A draw would leave everything open for the second leg played in Israel later. The odds here are set wrong by the betting market as with today’s expected lineups I see the Israel as the better team. Offensively Ireland are perhaps even a bit stronger though but defensively Israel have the edge in my view. They also have better structure in the midfield and their players are more skilled on average. Ireland are only marginal favorites here and we will go with Israel with the +0.5 goals handicap option with a high chance of winning!

In their most recent match Ireland traveled to Stadio Cino e Lillo Del Duca in Ascoli Piceno and got trashed by Italy. Yes, Italy were the favorites of course, priced around 1.60 to win on the betting market but Ireland were still very lame! Italy only recorded 55% ball possession but recorded a whopping 22 goals attempts and 10 shots on target. Ireland only shot once on Italy’s goal. They would have to improve to beat Israel despite the fact that Israel are of course not at Italy’s level. Before this Ireland did defeat Montenegro 3-1 at home as clear favorites and were unarguably the better team but did not record that much more than the visitors in terms of expected goals. Ball possession was 54-46%. I win by one goal’s difference would have been justified. I also want to highlight that Montenegro played below their normal level in this match. Against Bosnia and Herzegovina, they managed to take a massively a 3-0 home win, but the final score is massively misleading! They were priced around 1.65 to win by the bookies but the match, in reality, was balanced on the pitch. The visitors even recorded more ball possession, goal attempts, attacks and dangerous attacks. Israel, on the other hand, were a bit rusty offensively in their most recent match and beat San Marino only 2-0 but San Marino did not have much of a chance to take anything from this game after all. Before this they would have deserved a win in Latvia, but the lucky hosts took a 1-0 win despite Israel being much better recording much more (8-1) shots on target and (19-3) goal attempts. On the 29th of Match they challenged very strong Germany well as huge underdogs despite losing 0-1 at home.