Russia – Saudi Arabia

The host Russia oficially opens the World Cup 2018 with a game against Saudi Arabia from Group A of the competition. Let’s examine it in our vip soccer bets for today.

This is the first time when Russia are going to organize a competition of this calibre. This tournament will be played in a moment of complicated political relations. Some people even suggested that the World Cup should be boycotted, because of their political vision on Russia. Well, of course, this won’t happen and everything will go as planned.

Alongside Russia and Saudi Arabia, Uruguay and Egypt are the other two teams in Group A of the competition.

A match against the underdog Saudi Arabia is a great chance for Russia to start the competition with a win. They know how difficult it’s going to be against Uruguay and Egypt, so they would need to get all of the three points against Saudi Arabia, which are arguably among the weakest teams in the competiton. The host have a goal to reach at least the 1/8-finals of the tournament and the whole nation will hope to see this happening. But there’s going to be some serious competition about this.

Two years ago Russia participated at the Euro 2016 in France and they made a dissapointing performance. Being held just two years before the World Cup, the European Championship was something as a big repetition for the Russian team before the big tournament at home. Sadly for the entire nation, the Russian side didn’t show much of a promise, being unable to pass the group stages.

Russia qualified automatically for the World Cup, being the host of the competition. Because they didn’t have to play in official games, they had to arrange a lot of friendlies to keep their rhythm. In the last two years Sbornaya faced some really classy teams like Belgium, Ivory Coast, Chile, Portugal and Mexico.

Of course, the most important are the last few games, because they show in a full light what’s going on with the team and what is its current form. Here’s the moment to point out that Russia’s results in the last few months do not bring a lot of hope to the fans. Sbornaya didn’t win neither one of their last six friendly games. They made two draws against Iran and Spain and suffered four defeat from the hands of Argentina, Brazil, France and Austria.

The head coach Stanislav Cherchesov is trying to explain that these are just friendly games, so the result is not the most important thing. But there’s already some doubt about the real potential of the Russian team. That’s why the first game against Saudi Arabia is so important – a win against the Green Falcons will lower the pressure and will increase the confidence of the team before the next game.

Saudi Arabia on the other hand are among the biggest underdogs of the competition. Led by the Spanish legend Juan Antonio Pizzi, the Green Falcons are not a team which anyone expects great things from. They managed to beat Australia for the second place in Group B of the Asian qualifiers, which allowed them to qualify directly for the World Cup. They won six of their ten matches in the group.

How we said, this game is crucial for Russia, mainly because of the confidence of the team. The matches against Uruguay and Egypt shall be much more difficult than this one, so the Russian players need their confidence to be as high as possible. This can happen only after a win in the first leg.

These are our vip soccer bets for today for the World Cup 2018 clash between Russia and Saudi Arabia.