World Cup 2018 South American Qualifiers: Ecuador in the top 4?

(Baonghean.vn) - In the 14th round, all attention will be on the match between Ecuador and Colombia, because those are the 2 teams ranked 5th and 4th on the rankings. If the host Ecuador wins the match, they will likely enter the top 4, which will be eligible for an official ticket to Russia to participate in the 2018 World Cup Finals.

Thrilling

In the last 5 confrontations, Ecuador only won 1, lost 4, in which the most recent was the first leg at Estadio Metropolitano Roberto Melendez of Colombia, where coach Jose Pekerman's team won the away team 3-1. Remember, at that time, Ecuador was surprisingly leading the South American rankings, along with extremely impressive performance.

At that time, Ecuador showed surprising efficiency when they defeated the giant Argentina right in the capital Buenos Aires. For 9 consecutive months, Antonio Valencia and his teammates have not lost a single match in all arenas. Meanwhile, Colombia has had 3 consecutive matches without knowing the taste of victory.

This time, the home fans of Ecuador are looking forward to two names, defender A. Valencia of MU and striker Enner Valencia of West Ham, who will be the leaders when they return to the national team. The home team's attack, in addition to Enner Valencia, will be expected to destroy Colombia's defense with names like Montero, Cazares, and Martínez.

8th victory

When Argentina and Uruguay lost 0-3 and 1-4, no one believed that Brazil would not win big against Paraguay, the team currently ranked 7th on the rankings, at home. If anything, the home audience was just curious to see who would score and who would wear the captain's armband for the yellow-green team.

Neymar (10) - Brazilian striker is one of four Selecao players in the best squad in South America at the moment, voted by GOAL. Photo: Internet

Simply, after winning the gold medal at the Rio 2016 Olympics, Neymar resigned as Brazil captain and coach Tite decided to apply a policy of rotating the captaincy. Center-back Miranda (playing for Inter) Miranda was the first to receive the honor, when he captained Brazil in the match against Ecuador 3 - 0 in Quito in September 2016..

The captain's armband was rotated between Dani Alves (matches against Colombia, Argentina), Fernandinho (Peru), Filipe Luis (Venezuela) and Renato Agusto (Bolivia) and recently Miranda wore this armband again in the big win against Uruguay 4-1. It is not known whether coach Tite has cast a spell on the captain's armband or not, but Selecao is heading towards the finish line alone.

The strong team will win

In the remaining 3 matches, Bolivia meets Argentina, Chile meets Venezuela, Peru meets Uruguay, experts say there are hardly any surprises, especially when Chile plays at home. Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela are currently ranked 8th, 9th, 10th in the rankings and have shown very poor performance, in which the defense of Bolivia, Venezuela has conceded 32 and 31 goals and is considered a "point bank" for regional teams.

World Cup 2018 South American qualifiers. Photo: Internet

Peru's form is better but they have lost 6/13 matches and are playing Uruguay, who are hungry for points to avoid Argentina's pursuit. Obviously, there is no hope of closing the gap with Brazil, but Uruguay needs to maintain a 1-point advantage with Argentina right behind.

So, in 5 matches, almost 4 matches have determined the winner and Brazil is the team that will soon have a ticket to Russia, when only need 2 wins in the remaining 5 matches. All the attention of fans will be focused on the match between Ecuador and Colombia, where the loser will "fall" out of the top 4.

AT