The 2021 Nations League final will take place on Sunday, October 10, 2021, at San Siro Stadium in Italy between France and Spain. The kick-off time for the match is 19:45.
After a disappointing European Championship between June and July 2021, France were able to pick up themselves to face the highly rated Belgium side in the semifinals stage of the 2021 Nations League.
The French side came from two goals down, courtesy of Yannick Carrasco and Romelu Lukaku’s strikes, to beat Belgium 3-2.
In the semi-final game, France waited until the 62nd minute to get their first goal thanks to Karim Benzema’s strike. Shortly after, France were awarded a penalty which Kylian Mbappe converted in the 69th minute.
Lukaku almost helped Belgium to get back the lead but the Video Assistant Referee counted his effort as an offside.
The worst happened for Belgium in the 90th minute when Theo Hernandez scored the match-winner to give France the much needed passport to the 2021 Nations League final.
As for Spain, they got into the 2021 Nations League final after ending the almost two years unbeaten run of Italy.
The match started on a bad note for Italy in their homeland when Spain’s Ferran Torres gave his country the lead in the 17th minute.
Things got worst for Italy when the country’s captain, Leonardo Bonucci was shown the red card in the 42nd minute for an elbow on Sergio Busquets. Before the end of the first half, Torres scored another goal to double Spain’s led.
Despite playing with ten men throughout the second half, Spain were not able to score another goal. Italy even went as far as scoring in the 83rd minute, thank Lorenzo Pellegrini’s strike.
The late-minute goal was not enough to give Italy the firepower to get back into the game. Hence, the match ended 2-1 in favor of Spain.
As it stands, Spain will attempt to win the 2021 Nations League against France on Sunday or France follow up their 2018 FIFA World Cup triumph by beating Spain in the league final.
The winner of the match will become the second country in the history of the tournament to win the Nations League. Portugal was the first country to win the tournament during the 2018-2019 season.
The 2019-2020 edition of the league did not hold because of the coronavirus pandemic that disrupted the football calendar across the world.
Meanwhile, Italy and Belgium would make do with the third-place match on Sunday. The match will take place at Juventus stadium at 14:00.
Italy are the reigning European Championship winners and are expected to win the third-place match to compensate for the heartbreaking loss to Spain in their homeland.
