The second match of another busy day of action at the FIFA World Cup on Friday sees the tournament hosts looking to repair the damage they did on the opening day when they face the African side Senegal.
Both teams lost their opening match and in truth didn’t look particularly good at all and with the loser here as good as gone from the competition they are both going to need to show sufficient improvement in this one.
Where to watch
This match will be shown live and in full on the BBC 1 channel in the UK with the short build-up coming at 12.45pm and kick off at 1pm.
Qatar
I think it is safe to say that Qatar are a whole lot better than what they showed in that opening match of the tournament. It was pretty clear that they were bitten by stage fright against a competent Ecuador side but now that they have experienced what it all entails you would imagine that we will see a much better performance from Qatar. It will need to be because this is a match they can’t afford to lose if they are to stay afloat in the competition.
There were two issues for Qatar in that opening game. The first one was that their defence opened up far too easily and the second one was that for the most part they just couldn’t keep the ball and by not being able to keep the ball they couldn’t bring their attacking players into the game. They looked a little gun shy too which isn’t like Qatar. Usually they flood men forward and look to press high but that wasn’t the case in that first game.
Senegal
Given their reputation, there is a case to be made that Senegal were one of the more disappointing teams in the opening set of games. There is some slack to be given with Sadio Mane out injured and clearly that left a huge hole in the side and things but there were still enough players of quality on the pitch to deliver more than what they offered. The problem with offering nothing is if your keeper has a couple of moments of madness you’ll get punished and they were.
Senegal had no answer to the technical qualities that the Dutch had in that first game but they will want to see a lot more of the ball here and get the pace and power they have in the forward areas much more involved in the game. They will probably need to defend a lot better than they did too because you would imagine that the confidence of Edouard Mendy will have taken a bit of a hit so he could do with some protection.
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Team News
Qatar have rotated their goalkeepers regular in the lead up to this tournament and after some poor moments in the first game they might being Meshaal Barsham in for Saad Al Sheeb and look to tighten things up there.
Aliou Cisse has confirmed that he will keep with Edouard Mendy for this match despite his indifferent display against the Dutch. That just leaves the central forward position up for grabs with Villareal attacker Nicolas Jackson a potential option.
Betting
This isn’t an easy match to bet on because we don’t know for such that Qatar are as bad as they offered up in the first game. If they’re not, as I suspect they are not, then a case can be made for them being value here because none of the African sides have impressed in the tournament and Senegal were clearly missing Sadio Mane in that first game. I’m not going to go mad in this one but I will have a small punt on a player.
One of the things we saw in that opening game was that Qatar panicked every time the ball came into their box from wide areas, whether in open play or from set plays, and I think Senegal can exploit that. Idrissa Gueye was on all the set plays against the Dutch and although Senegal didn’t really threaten from them they are not up against the likes of Virgil van Dijk and Matthijs de Ligt here. You can get 5/1 on Gueye assisting a goal and with some pretty big boys in this Senegal side a goal from a set play certainly can’t be ruled out so I’ll have a dabble on that happening.
Tips
Back I.Gueye – Over 0.5 assists for a 1/10 stake at 6.00 with Bet365
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