Match 27: Slovakia - Paraguay :: Pre-match Discussion

For me this is a key game in the group round.

There are a few groups which have an obvious winner and then an underdog and then 2 what looks like evenly matched teams.

Win this game and go through to probably play Holland.

Lose go home.

Draw and then look to either try and get goals vs NZ or defend for a draw vs Italy.

A great hidden gem of a game in my opinion

 

I think Paraguay are favorites to win this one. They have more individual quality, performed well in tough South American qualifiers and have loads of experience from previous World cups.

Slovakia may have won their group, but they were well beaten twice by 2nd placed Slovenia (1-2 away and 0-2 at home) but managed to win a tremendous amount of points from games against the Czechs and Poles (3 wins and 1 draw) who were both subpar and ravaged by problems.
Yet, at least from the highlights I saw, they were outplayed by the Czechs in both games and by the Poles in the last game, but managed to somehow get 7 points out of those 3 games.

To make it short, I question Slovakia's capabilities and they also have 0 big tournament experience. Gettin lots of points from mediocre performances is a quality of its own, but usually those sort of runs of luck tend to end eventually, only big teams can afford that in the long run...

 

If Paraguay lose to Italy, this will be a huge match which I think Paraguay are very capable of winning.

 

I think Paraguay are favorites to win this game, but I think this game can easily be a draw, if anything as Slovakia are too much of a hardened team mentally and they have the distance to go that extra mile, as Slovakia remind me too much of Czech Republic as they are a team who teams should be very weary of, and not want to face. As Slovakia have such stars like Vladimir Weiss III, Robert Vittek, Martin Srktel, etc., and Holosko, so I see them easily drawing with Paraguay since they will be missing one of their stars Cabanas who will be out with an injury

 

Also remember, it's gonna be cold in Bloemfontein which is a bit of an advantage for Slovaks... I think

 

slovakia is going to win

 

I'll be really honest here, both of these teams on paper are evenly matched when you really think about it, so this is a tough prediction here that I am going to have to make, but I see the Slovaks barely beating Paraguay by a score of 1-0, as Slovakia is more organized at their backline than Paraguay is, and Slovaks are too tight on defence, and have more of a scoring punch up front with Vladimir Weiss, Robert Vittek, and Marek Hamsik, all Paraguay has is Lucas Barrios and Roque Santa Cruz, plus Paraguay's goalie Villar is a small guy, and I think Slovakia can capitalize off of that, as they have tall players

 

Now, after the draw to NZ, Slovakia better wake up... Weiss played good but Hamsik was nowhere to be found... They had chances but weren't converting...

Still, I think this one will be close. 1:1 or 1:0 either way. Have no idea who will win this one. I obviously want Slovakia to win but after today's game with NZ, I'm not sure.

 

Evenly matched, seriously? lol

 

Possible Paraguay lineup for this game.


---------------------Villar----------------------

-----Veron-----Alcaraz-----Da Silva-----Morel---

-------Vera---------Riveros-------V. Caceres----

-------Barrios-------Santa Cruz-------Valdez-------

 

Why didn't Roque start the 1st game anyways?

I expect big things out of him from here out.