France vs South Africa Prediction & Betting Tips - Men's Olympic Tournament

Prediction published on 22/07/2021, 23:38  by Daniel Ngulu | Modified on 22/07/2021 at 23:39 in Men's Olympic Tournament Predictions

The Tokyo 2020 games are on and the football side is already exciting after the first round of matches. France, one of the favored teams at the competition, had a faulty start in Group A, and will hope to recover against South Africa, who also had a losing start. France suffered a 4-1 loss at the hands of Mexico in their opening game and go to this game placed bottom. They were unconvincing in the game and not even the presence of the experienced Florian Thauvin and Andre Pierre Gignac would help. In reality, France have great individual players in their team but they haven’t played together as a team and that’s why Mexico found it easy to dismantle them. Going to the South Africa game, France should be the stronger side and Andre Gignac, who scored from the penalty spot against Mexico, will be a key player. The fall to Mexico was France U23’s second after their defeat to England U23 back in 2016.

South Africa U23 have played more matches together and will be hoping they can recover from a 1-0 loss to Japan. They struggled to create anything in their opening match, focusing more on defence and they almost grabbed a point. Real Madrid forward Takefusa Kubo scored the only goal in the game, which saw the hosts get rewarded for their more positive play. South Africa survived waves of attack from the hosts, who even had a goal disallowed and penalty shouts ignored. It can only get tougher against France and with a winless run of five matches, they are firmly the underdogs. They have also failed to score in four of their last five matches and in three of the last four, they’ve conceded two or more goals.