Turkey 0-3 Italy; entertaining curtain-raiser for Euro 2020

The European Championship kicked off last night with Italy picking up the victory against Turkey. Although they were the away team on paper, the match was held in Rome and the fans cheered their team on to a 3-0 victory in the first of 51 games to be played this summer. 

The first half was goalless, but a good few chances were found for both teams. Shortly before halftime, Burak Yilmaz dived for a penalty rather embarrassingly that was not given. 

Merih Demiral then made some unwanted history on the night, as he became the first player in the history of the Euros to score an own goal in the very first game of the tournament.

Ciro Immobile was ultimately the hero of the night for the Azzurri as he scored the second goal and set up Lorenzo Insigne for the second one on the night. And within 79 minutes, Italy were 3-0 up and cruised through to victory with no problems. 

One of the surprises on the night was seeing Leonardo Bonucci and his long time centre-back partner Chiellini at the back again, as both the veterans put on a great shift to keep a clean sheet against a creative Turkish opposition.

If this a sighter of things to come in the month ahead, then we are in for some very entertaining matches. Defensive errors can happen from teams looking good on paper as well, as shown by Turkey today. However, it would be unfair to judge their entire campaign based on one match. 

Wales, Denmark and Belgium are in action today against Switzerland, Finland and Russia respectively.