Saturday 16th June – Croatia vs Nigeria
If you’re a casual fan, you probably only know about Nigeria because of their sick jerseys, but they’ve got some pretty good players as well.
The Super Eagles are headlined by Leicester City star Wilfred Ndidi. Outside of Riyad Mahrez, Ndidi was Leicester’s best player this season, *almost* filling the massive hole that N’Golo Kante left.
At just 21 years old, he’s already shown that he’s a quality defensive midfielder, and he’ll look to take his form into this match to help Nigeria stifle Luka Modric and this Croatian midfield.
Speaking of Croatia’s midfield, they have one of the best in this tournament, featuring Modric, Mateo Kovacic, Ivan Rakitic, and Marcelo Brozovic.
If Mandzukic and Perisic can get going up top, Croatia could seriously be a dark horse to make a deep run this year.
Prediction: Croatia 2-1 Nigeria
Honorable mention – Argentina vs Iceland
Fans should try to watch Argentina as much as possible, but if there’s one of Argentina’s matches that you have to miss, let it be this other Group D match.
As we saw in Euro 2016 and in UEFA qualifying, Iceland are obviously no joke at the international level. My only concern about this match in particular is that they’ll gameplan not to lose, meaning they’ll sit back and try to absorb as much Messi/Aguero/Higuain/Dybala firepower as possible and play for a draw. I don’t think it ends up working, though…
Prediction: Argentina 3-0 Iceland