Bank on France in big pool

Bank on France in big pool

The curtain has fallen on the 2021-22 season but there’s no break in the soccer action and there’s big money to be won with TAB adding R1 million to seven soccer pools from tonight through Sunday

By Mark Gleeson

Seven TAB soccer pools through the weekend kick off with cash boosts totalling R1 million and the action starts with R250,000 added to tonight’s Soccer 10 pool.

World champions France look a banker to win against Denmark in match five in what is certain to be a big pool. They are at home to Denmark in a UEFA Nations League clash and look sure to outscore the Danes.

Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers and Nations League games will continue over the weekend with a special focus on the teams that will be playing at the World Cup in Qatar near the end of the year.

There are only two windows of opportunity for teams to get ready for the finals in November and December, but the days of traditional warm-up friendlies are now largely gone.

The five African representatives for Qatar must play two Cup of Nations qualifiers in this month’s international window and two more in September and that will be their lot in terms of World Cup preparations.

Some are facing tougher opponents than others, like Morocco who host Bafana Bafana next week. But Cameroon do not have an opponent this weekend after Kenya were kicked out of the tournament and Senegal will hardly be stretched at home by Benin, as they begin the defence of their title.

The same too for 2019 African champions Algeria tomorrow night at home to Uganda, even with former Orlando Pirates coach Milutin Sredojevic now in charge of the visitors from East Africa.

Ghana’s Black Stars are in Angola where the Central African Republic await. The game is being played on neutral turf because there are no suitable venues in the Central African Republic, one of the lesser lights of African football.

A team of Ghana’s quality should have little trouble as they showed on Wednesday, when they came alive in the second half to beat Madagascar 3-0 at home.

The Nations League groups (leagues) are based as much as possible on equal strength versus equal strength, making it tougher to correctly forecast the outcome of the games.

The derby between Belgium, recently toppled from first place in the FIFA rankings, and the Netherlands in Brussels tonight will be tightly contested. But France should follow a likely win over Denmark tonight with an away success in Croatia on Monday in a repeat of the 2018 World Cup final.

Italy host Germany tomorrow just days after a 3-0 thumping by Argentina in the Finalissma in London. That defeat came after missing out on qualifying for the World Cup finals and the European champions look to be imploding. They need to improve fast to avoid having salt rubbed into their wounds by a German team unbeaten in their last nine outings.

England play away in Hungary on Saturday at the venue where they won 3-0 last year amid some ugly crowd scenes. It should again be an easy assignment for Gareth Southgate’s side.