FIFA World Cup: Egypt vs Uruguay preview

The second match of the 2018 FIFA World Cup will take place at Central Stadium in Yekaterinburg on Friday, when African side Egypt will take on South-American outfit Uruguay in Group A. It will be a match between two teams that rely heavily on their star players: Egypt on Liverpool's Mohamed Salah and Uruguay on Barcelona's Luis Suarez. The two nations have met just once before, it happened in a friendly match in 2006 and Uruguay won it 2-0. Uruguay have won the World Cup twice, but that happened a long time ago, in 1934 and 1950. Egypt have high hopes for the 2018 World Cup, even though this is just the third final tournament in their history. They have not qualified for the World Cup since 1990 and never managed to get past the group stage, but this time they have a superstar in their squad: Liverpool's Mohamed Salah. However, Salah could miss the team's first match at the World Cup due to a shoulder injury that he picked up during the Champions League final. Egypt have not won any of their warm-up friendlies this year, they lost three of these matches and drew against Kuwait and Colombia. Uruguay did very well to finish second behind Brazil in the South American qualification group and they seem ready to push for a good result at the final tournament. They have won their last three friendly matches without conceding any goals and don't have any injury concerns ahead of Friday's game. Sampdoria midfielder Lucas Torreira is in the middle of a move to Premier League side Arsenal, so he might have to settle for a place of the bench this time if head coach Oscar Tabarez thinks he might not be fully focused on the match. Probable line-ups: Egypt: Hadary - Fathy, Hegazi, Gabr, Shafy - Hamed, Elneny - Salah, Said, Trezeguet - Mohsen Uruguay: Muslera - Varela, Gimenez, Godin, Caceres - Bentancur, Vecino, Nandez - Arrascaeta - Cavani, Suarez My prediction: Uruguay to win 3-1, Suarez and Cavani might prove too much to handle for the Egyptian defense. Here are the odds for the match at Bet365: Egypt win - 7.00 Draw - 3.75 Uruguay win - 1.61