Venue: Cape Town, South Africa
The second match in this year’s World Cup Finals tournament in South Africa will be held in Cape Town at 20:30 local time, and will see France, who reached the final in Germany in 2006, take on Uruguay.
Despite France’s previous good performances, winning the World Cup in ’98 and coming second in 2006, they have also had their less glorious moments, such as their famously terrible run in 2002, where the holders of the cup went out in the group stages without scoring a single goal – the first time in football history this had happened.
France were not even one of the seeded teams in this World Cup, and were lucky that the opposition in their group from the “seeded” pot was drawn to be South Africa, who only attained that status as hosts and are not strongly fancied at all. Whilst this does make it a more interesting group, and improve Frances chances of making it through, it does not say much about expectations for the former champions.
After a disappointing qualifying campaign where they only narrowly made the finals after controversially beating Ireland, France will be looking to prove this isn’t going to be another poor World Cup for them.
Uruguay, whilst not strong favourites, had a good qualifying run by comparison (though again, having to qualify via the play offs) and will be keen to pick up three points off of this unpredictable opposition.
The odds for France to win the match are 21/20, with Uruguay 9/4, so there isn’t a lot of money to be made on France in this match. A draw is at 21/10. These odds for Uruguay, considering everything that is counting against the French, look like a good price. Find very good odds at Bet365 or Sportsbook (US Friendly)
France and Uruguay have only played once before, although it was reasonably recently in November 2008. That match ended in a goalless draw, a result which, whilst a bit boring for spectators, could be satisfactory for both teams.
