France vs Paraguay Prediction - Can Paraguay Disturb France's Good Moment?

Next Sunday, 1 June 2014, France will entertain Paraguay at the Allianz Riviera Stadium in Nice on a match that will provide Les Bleus yet another opportunity to adequately prepare their presence at the World Cup.

The French side hammered Norway last Tuesday on a match that took place at Saint-Denis by 4-0, thanks to two goals from Arsenal’s striker Olivier Giroud, one from Paul Pogba and another from Loic Remy. Despite Giroud’s two goals, the man of the match was Marseille’s versatile winger Mathieu Valbuena, who put up a classy performance as he set up three of his side’s four goals. At the end of the match, France’s head coach, Didier Deschamps, who was severely criticized for leaving Nasri out of the World Cup, was a very happy man and expressed admiration for his players' work: “Scoring four goals is never easy at international level. It’s good for our confidence. At the end of our first week of work, it’s very good.”

Les Bleus have been enjoying a good run of matches after their defeat at Kiev on the first match of the World Cup Qualification playoffs back in November with three wins on the same respective amount of matches.

France were placed on Group E, alongside with Switzerland, Ecuador and Honduras. The French are favourites to win the group, although they will have to count on the opposition from a highly motivated Swiss side that can seriously disturb Les Bleus’ hegemony at that stage of tournament.

The match against Paraguay next Sunday will certainly pose a good opportunity for the French to test their capacity against a team that might have some game similarities with one of their World Cup opponents, Honduras.

As for Paraguay, last Thursday’s win against Cameroon put an end to a negative row of results (of just one win in nine matches) and this certainly served to lift the morale of the troops. The South American team failed to grant their presence at the Brazil’s World Cup but they are already preparing the team’s participation at the 2015 Copa América, which will take place in Chile next year.

Having managed to put a stop to some less impressive and possibly underachieving results, Paraguay will definitely face France with renewed confidence, but they may still not have what is necessary to counter the Les Bleus’ excellent moment.

The last two times both teams went head-to-head, the matches ended in a goalless draw, one of which was in 1998 at the World Cup, which interestingly took place in France and ended with the win from the home side. Nevertheless, for next Sunday’s match, France will have everything at their disposal to put an end to such a dull recent record, as they are firm favourites to win the match.

France

Stats: W-6 L-2 D-2

Recent Form - WWWLW

Paraguay

Stats: W-3 L-5 D-3

Recent Form - WLLDL

Possible Line-ups

France (4-3-3) - Loris - Debuchy - Sahko - Koscielny - Evra - Cabaye - Matuidi - Pogba - Griezmann - Valbuena - Giroud

Paraguay (4-4-2) - Fernandez - Moreira - Gomez - Ortiz - Alonso - Cáceres - Riveros - Pérez - Oviedo - Santa Cruz - Gonzalez

Prediction: France 2 Paraguay 0

Date & Time: Sunday, 1 June 2014 - 20:45CET - 19:45 GMT

Venue: Allianz Riviera Stadium (Nice)