2010 World Cup: Group G Previews, June 15

Ivory Coast vs Portugal

Ivory Coast has had some fantastic news in the form of Drogba’s possible early return from injury. Although it isn’t as if they’re short of talent going forward, Kalou and Dindane are both highly experienced in their respective top flights. Unfortunately for the Coast, this is quite possibly the worst group that the team could’ve found themselves in, having to contend with Portugal and Brazil to qualify and even with a fully fit squad, it is not something that is going to be easy.

Portugal has had a pretty good run of form in recent tournaments although if that is going to continue, then they absolutely have to win this match, considering the Brazilians lie in wait and any points dropped here could be enough to see the Ivory Coast go through instead of the Portuguese.

By now, we all know that the man to watch in this side is Ronaldo; without him they wouldn’t be even half the team they are. Expect to see a glowing performance from Ronaldo and if the Portuguese play like they did in the warm up, expect to see plenty of goals (seeing as they’ve scored six times in their last two matches).

Overall, this could be one of the better group opening matches. Both sides have got teams who are capable of showing us some spectacular goals, although for Ivory Coast this does hinge on the fitness of Drogba. Both teams have a bit of a free-flowing nature and hopefully this will come to the foreground pretty quickly, although it is likely that we’ll see both sides playing a little bit tenuously at the start of the game. After all—neither can really afford to lose this match.

Brazil vs North Korea

Unfortunately for the Koreans, the Brazilian second-stringers probably wouldn’t struggle too much to actually win this match. The Brazilian midsection will probably dominate the match and due to the massive gulf in quality, it doesn’t seem very likely that they’ll have any real problems.

The Koreans have pretty much been written off from progressing out of this group and to be perfectly honest they’d be lucky to get a point considering whom they’re up against.

Their side is not exactly of a high standard: most of their team comes from the pretty poor local leagues although a few have managed to scrape into the J league which is a much higher standard.

The Koreans will likely just be trying to avoid a major embarrassment at the hands of Brazil so expect to see a match thoroughly based on damage limitation—and good luck to them because they’re going to need it.

This match was only ever really going to go one way, and anybody, probably even the most patriotic North Koreans, will tell you that Brazil is more than likely going to win this match. The question is more a case of by how many goals. Odds are that Brazil will keep a clean sheet and probably score three or more goals. The Koreans have been full of surprises, nobody actually expected them to qualify, but this is just going to be one challenge too many and no amount of good form could possibly erase the gulf in class and allow the Koreans to get another surprising result.

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