Russia vs New Zealand Prediction 17 June 2017
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Russia vs New Zealand Prediction 17 June 2017

Tournament: 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup
Location: Krestovsky Stadium
Match date: 17.06.2017 at 16:00

On June 17 2017 at 16:00 in the first game of the Confederation Cup 2017 at the Krestovsky Stadium in Saint Petersburg the hosts of the tournament Russia will play against the winners of the OFC Nations Cup New Zealand.

The draw of the Confederation Cup made it so that the hosts of the tournament are going to play against the outsiders of the competition in the opening game. It seems to us that nothing is supposed to spoil the first match for Russia.

For the New Zealand the upcoming Confederation Cup will be the fourth one for the team in their history. Their previous times have never been successful as New Zealand have never won and have never made it to the play-offs. In fact, they have never won a single game in it, only lost 8 times and drew in the match against Iraq who are definitely not among the best teams of the world. 7 of their 8 losses were big ones and they conceded at least two goals in all of these matches.

In general, the level of the teams is clear. Most of the footballers of New Zealand play in the Australian championship and the rest of them take play for some middle-peasants or even teams from the lower divisions of top championships. There are two actually high level footballers Wood and Smith and they both play of the teams in the English Football League Championship. They also have Winston Ried, the captain of the teams who plays for West Ham and he won’t play at the Confederation Cup because of an injury.

New Zealand have already played two friendly matches as they were preparing for the tournament and lost in both of them to Belarus and Northern Ireland who didn’t even play with their main squads. We can also remind you of the World Cup qualification play-offs when New Zealand conceded 9 goals in their 180 minutes of two games they played. During the last two years New Zealand only won one friendly game against Oman. It’s a very poor result, considering the fact that they also played against UAE, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, China, Uzbekistan and others.

One can be skeptical about Russia national team and yet we have no doubt that the teams is going to outplay a competitor like that due to their class difference and the motivation Russia have playing at the home ground with the domestic fans watching.

Moreover, Russia looked pretty well in the match against Hungary not long ago. They show great cooperation and cause pressure. Of course, they have some problems with the squad bit none of them are critical. It seems to us that the host will manage to win with at least two goals difference in that Confederation Cup opening match.