Greece vs Ivory Coast Prediction - Will The African Elephants Be Able To Overcome Greece?

Next Tuesday, Greece and Ivory Coast will measure forces at Estádio Castelão in Fortaleza on a match that might offer the African team a ticket to the next round of the competition if they manage to win.

After a fairly disappointing display during the group's opening match against Colombia, Greece failed once again to arrange for a decent performance when they went head-to-head with Japan last week. In fact, the match against the Asian team has been considered by the pundits as one of the most uninteresting and uneventful matches of the competition so far. Greece was reduced to ten men still during the first-half and from that moment on they failed to make their strategy work against a Japanese side that was also thirsty for wins. The Hellenic manager, Fernando Santos, promoted some changes in his team but remained faithful to his usual 4-3-3 approach, based on quick and deadly counter-attacks that is yet to produce any good results during the tournament.

For the match against Ivory Coast next Tuesday, Fernando Santos will probably not be able to count on his most important centre forward, Mitroglou, who suffered an injury on the match against Japan and he is still slowly recovering from it.

As for Ivory Coast, the match against the Greeks is of paramount importance if they still want to claim a place at the next stage of the competition. After defeating Japan on their first match, the African Elephants failed to repeat such victory against Colombia in the middle of last week. On their first match against Japan, Ivory Coast only managed to solve the match after Drogba came in as a substitute early in the second-half, something that clearly transformed the team's attitude for the rest of the match. Lamouchi's men have been quite inconsistent for great periods of the matches and the clash against Colombia was no exception. The South American team led the way during several periods of the match and Ivory Coast only managed to completely counter that Colombian dominance after Gervinho's goal in the second-half, which proved to be too late for them.

For the match against Greece, it is likely that Lamouchi will implement some changes in his team, as he needs to win if he wants to avoid any last minute upsets, which might send his team home at this stage of the competition.

For next Tuesday's match, Ivory Coast are to be considered favourites, although, one never knows what an experienced and tricky team such as Greece may come up with.

Greece

Stats: W-1 L-1 D-3

Recent Form – DLWDD

Ivory Coast

Stats: W-1 L-2 D-2

Recent Form – LWLDD

Possible Line-ups

Greece (4-3-3) -  Karnezis - Torosidis - Sokratis - Vyntra - Holebas - Tziolis, Kone, Karagounis - Salpingidis - Samaras - Gekas

Ivory Coast (4-3-3) - Barry - Aurier - K. Touré - Bamba - Boka - Tiote - Die - Y. Touré - Gervinho - Kalou - Bony

Prediction: Greece 1 Ivory Coast 2