Sadio Mané played a key role in Liverpool’s run to the Champions League finals. Now he’ll look to key Senegal’s World Cup run.
Group H Predicted Order of Finish: Colombia, Senegal, Japan, Poland
A tough group to predict because, as a friend reminds me, Colombian football is a story of sadness, and traditionally, when Los Cafeteros enter a competition with heavy expectations, they disappoint terribly.
In a difficult group, I expect Jose Pekerman’s stylish attacking team to buck that trend.
The catalyst for Colombia is still James Rodriguez, who took the world by storm in 2014 and parlayed his heroics at that World Cup into a huge contract with Real Madrid. He had trouble settling in with the Galacticos, however, but recovered at Bayern Munich, where he was outstanding this past season. A true number ten, Rodriguez floats around the pitch, dropping deep to receive the ball, making quick distributions and hard-charging runs from the center of the pitch.
He’s a mesmerizing player and a joy to watch.
Radamel Falcao missed the last World Cup due to injury, but is back for this one to lead the line in the 4-4-1-1. Los Cafeteros also have one of the world’s best pure wingers, Juan Cuadrado of Juventus, who combnes nicely with the overlapping forays of PSV’s Santiago Arias.
The defense is where the club is truly improved from 2014’s quarterfinalist. Barca youngster Yerry Mina and Tottenham youngster Davinson Sanchez give the side talented, rangy CB’s who, despite inexperience, give the team athleticism and speed in the back they lacked in Brazil and should allow them to play a higher line this summer. Arsenal’s David Ospina is the goalkeeper- he had a miserable qualifying campaign and is probably the player in the starting 11 that presents the largest questions and concerns.
Every World Cup usually involves a team that emerges from relative obscurity to capture the imagination of the world.
While many (rightly) fancy Peru to be that team, don’t discount Senegal. The Lions are talented, feature one of the world’s best young players, and are extremely well-coached under Aliou Cisse. Senegal reached the quarterfinals in its only previous quarterfinals experience, and have the pieces and system to repeat the feat in Russia.
There is star power in the back, with the marvelous Napoli CB Kalidou Koulibaly joined by the imposing and technical Salif Sane of Hannover.
Senegal play conservatively, a 4-5-1 out of possession that only occasionally morphs into 4-2-3-1, but with their captain, Cheikhou Kouyate of West Ham, shielding the terrific defense, they are tough through the spine regardless of which Premier Leaguers (Idrissa Gueye, Badou Ndiaye, Cheikh N’Doye, Alfred N’Diaye) accompanies Kouyate in the midfield trio.
Those three will look to win the ball and feed the scintillating Sadio Mané, who occupies extra defenders at every level and has nice pieces that thrive off that in Torino’s M’Baye Niang, Stoke’s Mama Diouf and the clinical Bursaspor forward Moussa Sow.
This is a team that will be difficult to solve defensively and has enough star power to finish second in this group.
Japan are an experienced side with a host of lovely technical footballers, led by Borussia Dortmund’s Shinji Kagawa, and the always dangerous Pachuca midfielder Keisuke Honda, who is trying to score at a third consecutive World Cup.
Behind those two, Makoto Hasebe of Eintracht Frankfurt gives the Blue Samurai one of the competition’s best deep-lying playmakers, and one who seamlessly shifts to a stopper role when Japan take the lead.
Shinji Okazaki has an absurdly effective goal-scoring rate as an international, with 50 goals in 113 games, and along with Werder Bremen’s Yuya Osako, gives the team depth at forward.
Tactics are the big question.
Japan changed managers just prior to the competition, abandoning the foreign manager Vahid Halilhodzic for the Japanese legend Akira Nishino. His task? Organizing a defense that is aging and a bit short on talent to give that technical and dangerous attacking core a chance.
Poland enter the tournament clear betting favorites to come out of this group, and have the tournament’s best pure nine in Robert Lewandowski, but for me, they are more likely to place third or fourth. The Poles conceded 14 goals in qualifying, the highest number of any European qualifier, and that included conceding multiple goals to minnows like Kazakhstan and Montenegro. Making life more difficult, their best defender, AS Monaco’s Kamil Glik, was ruled out of the tournament due to injury earlier this month.
They do score plenty of goals, behind Lewandowski, West Brom’s Grzegorz Krychowiak and Piotr Zielinksi, but the defensive issues could be deeply problematic in one of the field’s most difficult groups.
Neil W. Blackmon co-founded TYAC. Follow him on Twitter @nwblackmon.