Italy vs Northern Ireland Prediction: Azzurri to rise to the occasion

The Uefa World Cup play-offs get underway on Thursday and one of the matches taking place sees Italy take on Northern Ireland in Bergamo (19:45 GMT, BBC iPlayer). Italy were mostly strong in their qualifying group with six wins from eight games.

Northern Ireland have reached this point via the Uefa Nations League route but in their World Cup qualifiers group they only conceded six goals in as many games. Below you will find my Italy vs Northern Ireland predictions, aided by the latest team news and match odds.

Team News

Attacker Federico Chiesa withdrew from the Italy squad owing to fitness concerns. Sandro Tonali, Alessandro Bastoni and Gianluca Mancini are also doubtful for this clash because of injuries.

There are seven forwards named in Gennaro Gattuso's squad, likely to ensure there are enough goalscorers on call to try and help the Azzurri reach the World Cup finals for the first time since 2014.

Football Odds

Premier League duo Dan Ballard and Conor Bradley are missing for Northern Ireland, striking a blow to Michael O'Neill's squad. Liverpool youngster Kieran Morrison has been handed his first senior call-up to help cover the absences of the two key starters.

Italy vs Northern Ireland Odds

With six wins from their last seven games, Italy are deemed the 3/10 favourites to win this match inside 90 minutes.

The most recent meeting between the two sides, a World Cup qualifier in 2021, ended in a 0-0 draw. The stalemate on this occasion is valued at 4/1.

Northern Ireland are 10/1 to spring a surprise in regulation time.

Each of the visitors' past three matches have gone under 1.5 goals, which is available here at 5/2.

To Win To Nil - Italy @ 5/6

After missing the last two editions of the World Cup, Italy cannot afford any more embarrassment on this stage, so there is going to be a lot of pressure on Gattuso and his players to prevail in these play-offs.

Northern Ireland at home will be considered a good way for them to start off because they have won three of the previous six competitive meetings with the Green and White Army. Each of those three victories came with a clean sheet, so I think backing the Azzurri to win to nil on Thursday offers good value to punters.

The hosts have won to nil in two of their previous three games. This selection is also backed up by Northern Ireland losing two of their last three competitive fixtures without scoring a goal.

Anytime Goalscorer - Pio Esposito @ 23/20

He may be 20 years old, but a lot of trust is being placed in attacker Pio Esposito ahead of this play-off campaign. He has fared well for Inter Milan in Serie A this term with six goals in 28 matches.

The striker has also impressed when featuring for the Azzurri. The youngster provided three goals for his country in their World Cup qualifying group and two of them came in the most recent matches against Moldova and Norway.

He possesses the quality to cause problems for Northern Ireland, who are missing two key defenders in Ballard and Bradley. There is good value in Esposito's 23/20 (implied probability of 46.5%) price to score anytime on Thursday.

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