The Russia vs South Korea match will be played on June 17, 2014, at Arena Pantanal Cuiaba.
This is a first round match in the group H, which consists of Algeria and Belgium, apart from these two teams.
Russia and South Korea played only once in their history, and that occurred only a few months ago. Russia won the match 2-1, after Korea’s initial 1-0 lead. Smolov and Tarasov scored for Russia, and Kim for Korea.
That match gives us an idea of how the forthcoming game could look like. Both teams will try to attack, and quite possibly, both will go for the win in this match. The pressure will be immense, but that shouldn’t cause too many problems to these teams – they know that if they win this match, they are in a great position to qualify for the knockout rounds.
Russia qualified pretty comfortably from their group, although Portugal was the favorite in that group. Russia managed to qualify directly, and Portugal had to go through additional qualifications against Sweden, but also made it through.South Korea also had no problems in qualifying for the World Cup.
After the qualification cycle had ended, Russia really played well in the friendlies. Apart from beating Korea, they managed to win three games, draw two, and avoid a single defeat!
South Korea played 13 games, and lost seven, with five wins and one draw. In their last five matches they have had four defeats and only one victory, over Greece, 2:0. In other matches they’ve played, they didn’t even score a single goal, and they even conceded 11!
It is clear that South Korea isn’t in the best form at the moment, and Russia will try to capitalise on that in this match.
We already said that this match will probably be open and both teams will be attack-minded, and the first national team who scores will be very close to the victory, having in mind that both Russia and Korea have a very dangerous counter attack.
When we talk about the star players, the Russians clearly expect the most from capable striker Kerzhakov, but the biggest strength of this team is probably the experienced coach Capello, who is one of the most prolific managers currently in charge of a national team.
On the other hand, Koreans have some pretty distinctive European-based players such as Ki from Sunderland, Kim from Cardiff, and the first star of the team is 21-year-old Bayer Leverkusen player Son, who scored 10 goals in this year’s Bundesliga.
When we look at all these facts, it is hard to predict the outcome of this match, but Russia is slightly nearer victory, so we can bet on their win.
Match Betting Prediction >>Russia Wins the Match @2.30 bet365
