Algeria against Austria, one of the last pair of
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Austria’s last World Cup, in 1998, wasn’t all they hoped it would be. After missing out on a trip to the United States four years earlier, they lost to Italy in the group stage and drew with Cameroon and Chile.
Many of Ralf Rangnick’s players weren’t even born when the wonderful Ivica Vastic scored the goal against Chile that offered hope of a place in the second round, before the Azzurri crushed their dreams. Algeria have qualified twice in the intervening years.
It’s impossible to ignore the fact that these teams have so far played Argentina and Jordan, which means they’ve had to overcome a determined effort against the latter, before or after falling victim to football’s ultimate one-man goalscoring show when facing the former.
Rangnick’s team played three warm-up friendlies, all of them against World Cup participants and all wins. Their most recent non-Messi loss was against Romania at the end of qualifying last October.
Algeria conceded fewer goals against Argentina but also scored fewer against Jordan, though Austria made harder work of that fixture. Messi aside, Algeria’s last defeat was against Nigeria in the Africa Cup of Nations quarter-finals in January.
There is one big positive omen for Austria. When they last made it out of the group stage – into a second group stage, in that case – they won their only previous fixture against Algeria to get there. But they won’t have the aforementioned West Germany incident to help them now, 44 years on.
Algeria vs Austria: Group J
FourFourTwo’s prediction
Algeria 2-2 Austria
FourFourTwo predicts a game that’s too close to call, goes back and fourth, but ultimately reaches the last few minutes with two sides happy enough to hold what they have.
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