Russia’s best bet to beat worst side

NOBODY would have hand picked the tournament’s two worst teams to launch the 2018 World Cup, but when Russia and Saudi Arabia meet tomorrow ( 1am, Australian time) it will be irrelevant as the world’s biggest sporting festival explodes into life in Moscow.

Hosts Russia, and Saudi Arabia are the two lowestranked teams at the tournament by some distance and are both in dire form.

Partly due to a lack of competitive matches, Russia has slipped to 70th in the FIFA rankings, while the Saudis are only a few places higher at 67.

Despite failing to win in seven matches stretching back to October, 2017, Russia has realistic hopes of making it to the second round for the first time in more than 30 years after being drawn in a group also containing Egypt and Uruguay. Russia coach Stanislav Cherchesov has been working overtime to rebuild his team, after a run of serious injuries to some of his most experienced operators. His team last tasted success via a 4- 2 victory over South Korea — and even that win needed two own goals.

The star of the team is striker Fyodor Smolov, who has become a scoring machine with more than 60 goals over the last three seasons for his club Krasnodar.

If they are going to win against anyone then it should be against a Saudi team coming off the back of successive friendly losses to Italy, Peru and Germany. The Saudi squad is desperately short of international exposure.