By G9ija
The FIFA World Cup will finally kick off on Sunday with hosts Qatar squaring up against Ecuador in the opening match of the tournament,
Every year, football fans have high hopes for the big countries enriched with football talents, but sometimes, a few of these countries fail to live up to expectations, particularly crashing out at the group stage.
Although, the groups at this year’s edition are fairly assembled with no ‘group of death’ per se, however, some ‘veteran’ teams in the tournament have odds stacked against them with respect to proceeding out of the group stage.
Vanguard Sports, in this analysis, rolls out three of those teams:
- United States of America
Making their appearance at the World Cup again since crashing out at the Round of 16 to Belgium in 2014, the USMNT have a tough group pitted with Iran, Wales, and England.
Although, on the grounds of experience, they look the most likely to make it out of the group with England. However, the current USA side is brimmed with young players and that might just work against them in Qatar.
- Mexico
Spearheaded by head coach Gerardo Martino, Mexico had interesting CONCACAF and World Cup qualifiers this year. But they seem to have their work cut out with respect to the caliber of teams they are drawn with: Argentina, Saudi Arabia and Poland.
While it is almost a given that Argentina are the favourites to make it out of the group, a solid Poland team, led by Robert Lewandowski, hungry to better their World Cup record in their tenth appearance would prove to be their obstacle.
- Ghana
One of the giants of Africa are back to the global stage with revenge on their mind as they are drawn with peculiar foe Uruguay at whose hands they suffered a scandalous exit at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
However, the question is: how good is this current Ghana side to avenge that defeat against the current Uruguay team? Not to mention that a bogey team like South Korea exist in the group.
The chances of Ghana escaping from this group are slim, except others fail to bring their A-game against the Black Stars.
