Italy vs Costa Rica Prediction - Will Los Ticos Be Able To Surprise Italy?

Next Friday, Italy will go head-to-head with Costa Rica at Arena Pernambuco in Recife on a match that might grant a ticket to the next stage of the competition for the winning team.

After defeating England on their first match, Italy will now face Costa Rica, the team that surprised football pundits last weekend after trashing Uruguay 3-1 for the group’s opening match. Cesare Prandelli’s boys pulled up a solid performance against the Three Lions last Saturday and although they have not entirely controlled the match, they grabbed a narrow win thanks to their usual skeptical approach to the game.

On their clash against England, Italy presented a variation of their traditional 5-3-2 style with the “supposed” fifth defender role performed by Daniele De Rossi, who served as some sort of anchor man in front of the centre back duo. Up in the front, Balotelli was the team’s only reference, although he had the constant support both from Candreva, who was in theory the team’s second “forward”, and Marchisio.

For the match against Costa Rica, it is not very likely that Prandelli will operate major changes in his team, although the return of the experienced goalkeeper Gigi Buffon to the team is almost certain, since he lost the first match due to injury.

As for Costa Rica, the match against Italy will serve them to prove that their win against Uruguay wasn’t just a lucky shot. Los Ticos put up a vintage second-half performance that caught Uruguay completely by surprise and they will certainly want to replicate such display on the match against the Italians. Led by an utterly inspired Joel Campbell, Costa Rica have controlled the second-half of the match and successfully exploited the breaches of a fairly nervous Uruguayan defensive line.

For the match against Italy, the Costa Rican manager, Jorge Luis Pinto, will probably not implement any significant changes in his team, although it might not be a very wise choice to use a strategy only based in counter-attacking movements against a fairly skeptical team such as Italy.

Because of their vast experience and due to the quality of their players, Italy must be considered firm favourites, but Costa Rica, who are still savouring their first match win, might take advantage from their group underdog’s role to try and inflict a major setback to the Azzurri.

Italy

Stats: W-1 L-1 D-3

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Costa Rica

Stats: W-2 L-2 D-1

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Possible Line-ups

Italy (5-3-2) -  Buffon - Darmian - Barzagli - Bonucci - Criscito - Pirlo - T. Motta - De Rossi - Marchisio - Candreva - Balotelli

Costa Rica (4-3-3) -  Keylor Navas - Y. Tejeda - Giancarlo Gonzalez - Oscar Duarte - Michael Umana - Junior Diaz - M. Urena - Cubero - Joel Campbell - C. Borges - Bryan Ruiz

Prediction: Italy 2 Costa Rica 1