Reigning world champions Germany kick off their FIFA World Cup campaign with a rather tough match on Sunday as they will face Mexico at Luzhniki Arena in Moscow. The two national teams have met five times before, always in competitive matches, and Germany have won on three occasions while the other two matches ended in draws. The last World Cup meeting between the two teams was in 1998, when Germany won 2-1, while last year at the Confederation Cup the Germans eased to a 4-1 victory in the semi-finals.
Germany will be hoping to win the World Cup again, it would be their fifth triumph at the most important international competition in football. Their success at the 2014 World Cup was followed by an elimination in the semi-finals at Euro 2016 but also by a rather comfortable triumph at the 2017 Confederations Cup. The World Cup qualifying campaign has also been quite straightforward for the Germans, they won all their ten matches, scored 43 goals and conceded just four. The friendly matches that followed were not as impressive, Germany won just one out of six and that was against Saudi Arabia last week. Mesut Ozil is an injury concern for head coach Joachim Low.
For Mexico this is the seventh consecutive World Cup final tournament, and they are looking to record their seventh consecutive qualification from the group stage as well. That's right, they have qualified from the group stage in all the six previous final tournaments, and also lost in the first knockout round on all occasions as well. Mexico dominated the North and Central American qualification section once again, they lost just one of their ten matches and easily finished first. However, they suffered a shock defeat against Jamaica in the semi-finals of the Gold Cup last year and lost 2-0 to Denmark in their last warm-up friendly match.
Probable line-ups:
Germany: Neuer - Kimmich, Hummels, Boateng, Hector - Khedira, Kroos - Muller, Reus, Draxler - Werner
Mexico: Ochoa - Salcedo, Ayala, Moreno, Gallardo - Herrera - Vela, Guardado, Santos, Lozano - Jimenez
My prediction: Germany to win 1-0, Mexico won't make it easy for the world champions.
Here are the odds for the match at Bet365:
Germany win - 1.50 Draw - 4.50 Mexico win - 7.50
sharpe
5 years ago
That was the first real big shock of the tournament and a huge one too. Maybe too few people expected such a performance from the Germans but as we saw in the tournament subsequently this result wasn't accidental at all. The Germans were ridiculously weak in this one while Mexico played their best game at the tournament,...
That was the first real big shock of the tournament and a huge one too. Maybe too few people expected such a performance from the Germans but as we saw in the tournament subsequently this result wasn't accidental at all. The Germans were ridiculously weak in this one while Mexico played their best game at the tournament, although they were pretty optimistic after that.
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IWILLPLAY.online
5 years ago
Today the World Cup realy starts with the Champion from 2014! Ladys and Gentleman...The most dangerous tournament team on earth comes to the green field to start "TheFiveStarHunting". .......let theeeeeeeese guys entertain youuuu.......dadada...."
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