Albania vs Spain Odds
| Albania Odds | +550 |
| Spain Odds | -209 |
| Draw | +350 |
| Over / Under | 2.5 -125 / +100 |
Albania meet Spain in a must win match if they want to make it to the knockout stage.
Albania got a goal deep into stoppage time against Croatia to secure a point and give themselves a chance at making it to the knockout stage. The Albanians have performed bravely in their second ever Euros, but they will need to pull off a massive upset against Spain on Monday.
With their 1-0 win over Italy, Spain have automatically locked up first place in Group B. You can make the argument that they were the most impressive team of the second round of group stage matches and even though this match means nothing to them, they will still want to keep the positive momentum going.
Let's get into my Albania vs Spain preview and Euro 2024 Predictions.
Albania
Albania grabbed an early lead against Croatia and did a valiant job for a majority of the match defending in their low block. Up until Croatia equalized in the 73rd minute, they had held them under one expected goal. The task will be different here against Spain because they will have to be the ones that will have to be the aggressors looking to try to attack the Spanish goal.
The problem with that is the are not set up to play that way. Sylvinho typically has them set up in a lower more compact defensive structure that makes it really hard to play through the middle of the pitch. My guess is at the beginning they are not going to leave themselves incredibly open and will pick their opportunities to play in transition.
Even though they created over two expected goals against Croatia, I have a really hard time seeing them repeat that here against Spain because they are one of the best defensive teams left in this competition. Albania primarily rely on transition attacks and shots from outside the box, which is not a sustainable method of creating high quality chances.
Spain
While this match doesn't mean anything to Spain, they will still want to play their brand of football and dominate this match from start to finish. They were incredibly impressive against Italy, not because they created a ton of chances, but becayse they suffocated them and didn't even give them a chance to get out of their own final third.
For the match, Spain had a field tilt of 77.66% and had 11 high turnovers against Italy, which is not surprising since coming into this tournament they had the best PPDA of anyone during qualifying.
Spain 1 : 0 Italy
▪ xG: 2.35 – 0.2
▪ xThreat: 1.94 – 0.75
▪ Possession: 56.9% – 43.1%
▪ Field Tilt: 77.6% – 22.4%
▪ Def Action Height: 54.5 – 37.0 pic.twitter.com/bvNgnxqAvu— markstats bot (@markstatsbot) June 20, 2024
Spain are most likely going to control a very large amount of possession in this match, looking to limit Albania's transition opportunities with their counter-pressing when they do lose the ball.
It will be interesting to see what type of lineup Spain goes with for this match, especially with Rodri suspended, but we have to remember this is only a at most a seven match tournament, so teams would rather keep the same lineups and continuity together since they have so few training sessions compared to the club level.
Albania vs Spain
Prediction
There are not many routes here for Albania to create high quality chances against Spain. They can try to play very direct with balls over the top, but even then they don't have the pace or the technical capabilities to be able to pull it off. I'll also put it this way, if Italy were unable to create anything in transition, then what makes you think Albania can?
Even though this match means nothing for Spain, they are still going to control possession, tilt the field and counter-press effectively. Albania averaged less than one expected goal during qualifying and were only able to create 0.46 xG in their first match against Italy, so I think they are going to have a real hard time creating chances.
I have both teams to score – no projected over -150, so I like the value on the current line of -116.
