The first match of this year’s World Cup knock out stage is looking highly promising. Two of the best teams in the world will be playing on Saturday and everything is on the line. Both teams took extremely different paths to advance out of their respective groups and France is slightly favored to come out ahead.
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Kick Off: 3:00pm on Saturday June 30th, 2018.
The game will be played at Kazan Arena in Kazan, Russia.
If you are asking yourself where to watch this game, feel free to check our suggested live stream bookmakers. Selected betting sites will be showing this match on Saturday. World Cup fans can also watch this game on TV as Fox and ITV One will be televising this match.
Well, Messi is the heart of Argentina and is he is their key to success. It would be almost blasphemous to not mention him in this preview. The Barcelona genius managed to score a fantastic goal against Nigeria which put Argentina ahead. He is not having the same impact here as in Barcelona but he is still one of the best players in the world. He’s definitely a guy you have to guard at any given time if you are a French defender or midfielder.
Cristian Pavón might also be able to make the difference for Argentina. Even though he was not featured in their starting lineup against Nigeria, he managed to make some important crosses after he entered the pitch. He is a fast and versatile winger who can be really productive.
Antoine Griezmann is one of the best strikers in La Liga and he has been scoring lots of goals in the last years for France. However, he has not scored in the World Cup yet and is not playing that well. However, he might be more motivated to score for his team against such a world-class opponent on Saturday.
You will also want to look out for the fast French wingers. I expect them to have a more impactful game against one of the weaker defensive squads. If Argentina does not have a good start into the match they might fall apart like they did against Croatia and cost them the game. Kylian Mbappé and Ousmane Dembélé have the potential to become players of the match against Argentina.
As we previously mentioned, bookmakers are favoring France in this game. However, I have not been impressed by their performance during the World Cup so far. They have a lot of fantastic players and young talents but seem to fail to transfer their quality to the pitch.
They are mainly focusing on preventing goals instead of creating goal scoring opportunities. This is an effective style of football but obviously not a very attractive one. Nevertheless this might be the proper way to advance during the knock out stage. Strong opponents will be more than willing to run the game and that will surely open up space on the field for the fast French wingers.
Argentina on the other hand has been an absolute disappointment. The team is a not only lacking a world-class defense, but also a solid goalkeeper, which was evidently displayed in their match against Croatia. Their offense has also not been able to create a reasonable amount of goal scoring opportunities, which is also linked to Lionel Messi’s inability to perform on a high level. However, since they have advanced to the next round with a clutch performance against Nigeria, motivation might be higher than assumed.
I expect a close game with few goals. 1Xbet is currently offering odds of 2.01 for 2 goals or less which seems like a reasonable bet for this match. If you are looking to bet on the match winner, we can recommend you to bet with Pinnacle, who are offering odds of 2.41 for France to win in regular time.
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