FIFA WORLD CUP 2018

FIFA WORLD CUP 2018 – Egypt vs Uruguay PREVIEW

A game between two sides who should be going through. The first game of the tournament involving some great superstars. Between Egypt and Uruguay we will see Salah, Suarez, Godin, Cavani on show. These are some of the best attackers and one of the best CB’s in the world in Godin. A game that should be very interesting. With Salah back from injury, can he pick up where he left off with Liverpool and carry Egypt to glory? Or will Uruguay prove to be too much with their deadly attacking partnership in Suarez and Cavani and an elite CB pairing in Godin and Gimenez. Read Preview below!

EGYPT

Egypt talent wise are a relatively decent side coming into the tournament. They have a few Premier League players, but their main man will be Mohammed Salah who is coming of a legendary season scoring over 40 goals and getting double figure assists while carrying Liverpool to a Champions League final which unfortunately got cut short. Some of the other main players in the Egypt team are Arsenal’s Elneny, then the youthful prospect Ramadan Sobhi and Hegazy, these will be the players that Salah will mostly rely upon to help, but Salah himself has to be 100% ready to take on the challenge and missing time could cost his football or maybe not, he will just show out as usual. I think we’ll see Egypt play defensive football against top oppositions like Uruguay and try to hit them on a counter because they’re not an elite team, but they can definitely have a go at Russia or Saudi Arabia when the time comes. But the most important thing for them is Salah needs to get on the ball as much as possible so he can impact the game.

To qualify to the world cup Egypt had to go through two stages. They entered in the 2nd stage and had to face the nation Chad over 2 leg and after losing the 1st leg shockingly 1-0, they had to bounce back and they did winning 4-0 and 4-1 on aggregate. Then Egypt entered the final 3rd stage and had to face Uganda Ghana and Congo home and away which totalled for 6 games. Egypt qualified in the most dramatic fashion beating Congo 2-1 at home with Mohammed Salah scoring a 95th minute winning penalty which caused some of the most incredible scenes in the stadium and around Egypt. Salah scored 5 goals in the qualifiers in total and Egypt won the group winning 4 , drawing 1 and losing 1 and qualified to their 3rd ever World Cup.

In the preparations for the World Cup, Egypt played 3 friendlies in which Salah played none. They had a poor draw against Kuwait 1-1, then a decent draw against a strong Colombia side 0-0, keeping a clean sheet was very impressive and finally they lost 3-0 to Belgium, they were completely outplayed and destroyed in that game. Nothing to go crazy about really for Egypt, can’t really decide how good they are either as their main man didn’t play. But for sure Egypt needs to play better at the world cup.

URUGUAY

It’s been business as usual for Uruguay, and here they are at another world cup. Uruguay are the heavy favourites in this group and it’s pretty understandable why. They’ve been here before, they have the best players, unstoppable attack partnership and probably the best CB pairing. Uruguay’s key stars are Suarez and Cavani, literally two of the best strikers in the world but another partnership that isn’t talked about is Godin and Gimenez at CB position. These two are both starters for Atletico Madrid, the best defensive team in the world and it’s mostly because of their Uruguayan CB’s who just shut attacks down and they’ll have to do the same against Salah. Uruguay will most likely play every game as an attacking team in the group stages because others are just much weaker and with a strike partnership that they have, they are expected to score goals. Expectations are high for Uruguay, they can definitely go to the Quarters or even further. Their biggest weakness is going to be midfield which could be very problematic because someone will have to step up and create for the two strikers, but we’ll see, it hasn’t been a massive problem on their road so far at least.

The road to the world cup was quite comfortable for Uruguay. They never really seemed in danger of missing out after starting off well and then consistently picking up points. Uruguay finished 2nd in the South American qualifiers behind Brazil. They picked 9W 4D 5L. Uruguay was also the 2nd highest scoring team with 32 goals in 18 games which is a good ratio because it’s really hard to score goals in those south American qualifiers and their attack partnership clicked with 15 goals combined (Cavani 10, Suarez 5). I think the fact that Uruguay qualified without being involved in that mess between 3-7 placed shows that they are a very good side. Uruguay also won a friendly tournament in China beating Czech Republic and Wales, keeping two clean sheets and in their preparation to the world cup they played one game against Uzbekistan beating them 3-0 as they should’ve. Don’t really know what to make of their current form as they only played once against a poor side, but the good signs are there, they seem to have had a great run so far and should go pretty far in the world cup.

What to Expect From The Game

Uruguay will be the favorites going into this game. I think we can expect Uruguay to be on the front foot for most of the game, but we will definitely see Egypt get on a break and attack them with the pace that Salah brings especially. I think Uruguay will be the better side in this game, they simply have too much. Egypt don’t have good discipline but their defenders will be put into the question trying to contain the deadly duo of Suarez and Cavani, meanwhile Uruguay themselves have an incredibly strong CB partnership who play for the same club and have good chemistry so when it comes to stopping either Suarez/Cavani or Salah and Co, I’d trust Uruguay to do that more. Uruguay are coming into this tournament on a high while Egypt haven’t really hit good form and it’s still questionable if Salah is truly 100% plus Uruguay have more world cup experience which could be a key too. Uruguay should be able to snuff Egypt out here and win 2-0.

ODDS – Decimal (WilliamHill)

Egypt Win – 6.50

Draw – 3.60

Uruguay – 1.57

KICK OFF – 15th June 2018 – 1PM UK Time, 5PM Local Time