Argentina poised for more World Cup glory
Lionel Scaloni’s side were one of only three teams to emerge from the group stages with a 100% record, alongside Mexico and France.
Eight goals scored, one conceded and three solid performances suggest Argentina can become the third nation to win back-to-back World Cups.
Lionel Messi has scored six of those eight goals and the Inter Miami star looks hungry for more World Cup success. He became the first player to score in seven consecutive matches at the tournament after his free kick against Jordan.
The World Cup Golden Boot has so far eluded Messi. If he maintains this kind of goal-scoring form, that could well change in the coming weeks.
The road to the semi-finals has certainly opened for the Albiceleste. Victory against Cape Verde will set up a clash against Australia or Egypt in the round of 16. If you win it, it is likely that Colombia will stand in the way of a third World Cup semi-final in the previous four tournaments.
Tournament favorites France and Spain are in the other half of the draw, so Argentina cannot face either of them before the final. That’s surely enough incentive for Messi and Co to progress seamlessly through the bracket.
Cape Verde was the biggest surprise of this summer
The island nation, located off the coast of Africa, has already made history by becoming the smallest country to ever reach the round of 16 of the World Cup.
Goalkeeper Vozinha was undoubtedly the cult star of the final. Following his exploits against Spain, the veteran saw his number of Instagram followers rise from 31,000 to almost 17 million. This even surpassed Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in terms of percentage increase over the course of the tournament.
However, after conceding just two goals in their three group matches, Cape Verde showed plenty of fighting spirit to reach the knockout stage.
Bubista’s men have absolutely nothing to lose, which could make the nation a dangerous opponent to break. Argentina will have to avoid complacency.
Team News
Scaloni has no new injury concerns heading into this clash. Messi started the final group match on the bench, but made the most of a late appearance, scoring his sixth goal of the tournament.
For Cape Verde, Telmo Arcanjo is out of the clash against the world champions due to a hamstring injury. Apart from this, Bubista has no other injury concerns.
Prediction
Argentina have played wonderful football so far, making easy work of Algeria, Austria and Jordan. Cape Verde, however, are currently on the crest of a wave and perhaps this could provide a huge boost to the nation ahead of the clash.
President José Maria Neves is convinced his country can win: “I think Cape Verde can beat Argentina 1-0,” he told the BBC.
Unfortunately, their journey will end at the hands of the reigning world champions, who are expected to win comfortably in Miami.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
You can follow all World Cup matches on FotMob – with in-depth statistical coverage including xG, shot maps and player ratings. Download the free app here.
Add FotMob as your preferred news source on Google by clicking – here.
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
