North Macedonia take on the visitors Maltain the round 1 match of UEFA Euro 2024 qualification. The match will be played on Thursday, February 23rd at National Arena Toshe Proeski (Skopje).
It is unlikely that Macedonians will be able to repeat their success from the last continental tournament, when they managed to make it to the final stage of the competition. Macedonians were placed in a very tough qualifying group, and even before the first round, they are already doomed to failure, as they will be facing the English, Italians, Ukrainians, and three other nations in this group. Therefore, the Balkans can only hope for some crazy fantasy to come true. As for the upcoming match, Macedonians are naturally the favorites, and they have a chance to at least be on the leading positions of the group after the first round. Although Malta has become quite tough in recent times, this primarily happens on their home ground. In away matches, the Maltese team performs much worse. It is not surprising that bookmakers have made the hosts significant favorites in this match.
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In the past qualification for the 2022 World Cup, Malta occasionally looked like a very feisty team, but overall, they were not able to do anything significant. They simply fell apart towards the end of the qualification, losing 1-7 to Croatia in the penultimate round and being beaten 0-6 by Slovakia in the final match of the qualification. And of course, after such results, all the small successes of the team are already cancelled in that qualification cycle. It will be extremely difficult for Malta to show anything in this qualifying cycle, as they have very tough opponents. There is even a fairly high probability that Malta may end this qualification cycle with zero points.
Perhaps the Macedonian team is not the kind of force to expect a complete rout of the opponent with a score like 4-0 or more. But they are easily capable of beating Malta by a couple of goals on their own field. Therefore, the choice in this match is to bet on the Macedonians with a handicap (-1). It is a quite reliable option with a good coefficient.
Prediction for the match: North Macedonia to win with -1.0 handicap.
