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Premiere in Lithuania for Cyprus - France-Italy match
The Nations League continues with Cyprus hosting Lithuania in the opening round.
Cyprus' Nations League road trip begins in Lithuania. The national team, which has been looking for a good run for many years now, will be hoping to get off to a positive start for many obvious reasons. Against Lithuania, our national team's task will not be easy, but they can get the result they are aiming for. In the last friendly matches against Moldova and San Marino away from home, we lost 3-2 and won 4-1.
Mr Ketspaya has replaced the injured Hambos Kyriakou with Yiannis Satsia.
The only time we faced the Lithuanians was in a friendly in 2023 and we won 1-0 with a goal from Ioannis Pitta, who has had an excellent year at AIK.
The derby of the night will be played in France, which will host Italy in the opening game of Group 2 in the top flight of the competition. The two teams failed to fulfil their big goal at the EURO, with the Roosters eliminated by eventual champions Spain and Italy bidding farewell to the competition after losing to Switzerland.
And if the French had the mitigating factor of an upset defeat to the Spaniards, the Italians could not for the life of them digest the elimination, with the media heavily criticising the team.
Because of their home ground, France have a slight edge in the odds, but no one can know how Italy will perform in a match that will be asked to show character.
In the other group game, Belgium will host Israel and has the first reason to win.
The Belgians, who disappointed again in a major competition after again being eliminated early (losing to France in the round of 16), will have to make radical changes in order to bring out their new batch of players in the hope of being better than the previous one, which was excellent but without registering any success.
Belgium place a huge emphasis on national teams and there is optimism that they will remain a force to be reckoned with. Of course, they should be helped by results and today against Israel they are aiming for a win.
The Israelis are trying in their own way to help their native players and by extension their national teams (low limit of foreign players in the league), however they are yet to record the desired results.
In the Nations League A division it will take a huge overhaul with the odds against.