Lausanne (AFP)

Beautiful revenge in sight: France, world champion, will find Belgium in the semifinals of the League of Nations during a mini-tournament organized in October 2021 in Italy, while the Italian selection and Spain will face each other in the other half, according to the draw made on Thursday.

Qualified at the end of the Nations League group stage, France, Belgium, Italy and Spain will be decided from October 6 to 10, 2021 in Milan and Turin, with semi-finals, small final and final to determine the successor of Portugal, the first winner of this trophy in 2019.

By virtue of this short draw carried out at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, the Blues will find the Belgians, whom they had eliminated in the semi-final of the 2018 World Cup (1-0), a match remained on the stomach of the "Red Devils" who felt they had offered more play than the French.

At the end of this semi-final, the Belgian goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, frustrated, had criticized the France of Didier Deschamps, guilty in his eyes of having "played nothing, played to defend with eleven players".

Scheduled three months after the Euro scheduled for summer 2021 (June 11-July 11), this Belgium-France should oppose the same headliners as in Saint Petersburg: Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne and Eden Hazard on the side Belgian, Hugo Lloris, Kylian Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann on the French side.

- Rejuvenated selections -

In the other semi-final, two rejuvenated selections will compete.

The Italians will try to be crowned at home, starting their tournament against Spain of Luis Enrique, a selection which has been one of their toughest opponents in recent years.

Roberto Mancini knows it well: if he became Italy coach, it was to rebuild the team after the humiliation of 2017, when the Azzurri failed to qualify for the World Cup-2018, a first since 1958. And this failure bears the mark of the "Roja", who had outclassed the Nazionale in qualifying, then beaten in play-offs by Sweden.

Previously, Italy had eliminated Spain in the round of 16 of Euro-2016 at the Stade de France (2-0).

None of the four semi-finalists made it to the previous edition of the "Final 4" and the Portuguese were eliminated last month in the group stage by France.

A financial endowment, which in 2019 amounted to between 6 and 2.5 million euros depending on the final ranking, is at stake in this competition launched in 2018 by UEFA to increase the number of matches at stake between two major tournaments.

© 2020 AFP