Lowly-ranked team Kazakhstan will face FIFA world no. 16 Poland at the Astana Arena in the Kazakhstani capital city of Astana on Sunday, Sep. 4 as part of the three-match opening day of Group E competitions in the first round of the 2018 FIFA World Cup UEFA qualifying tournament.
Start Time and Streaming Info
The game starts at 10 p.m. UTC+6. It can be viewed live online thru FuboTV.
The top teams of each of the nine groups at the end of the first round will automatically advance to the 2018 World Cup in Russia while the eight best runner-up squads in each group will enter a second round of qualifiers.
Kazakhstan is included in Group E together with Romania, Denmark, Montenegro, Armenia, and Poland, which may give them a shot for an outright berth if they can get past the Polish side.
The Hawks did not qualify to participate in last June's European Championship and so the team is eager to redeem themselves in this World Cup qualifiers. With that, they had been busy with participating in friendlies this year, being unbeaten in three of the four exhibition matches they had so far played.
However, the one loss that head coach Talgat Baysufinov's boys had was their most recent game, a 0-2 loss to Kyrgyzstan in their warmup friendly on Tuesday at the Spartak Stadium, via Soccerway.
Meanwhile, Poland is the best team in the group and they are the overwhelming favorites to take the outright World Cup berth in Group E. They may face slight resistance from Romania and Denmark, but head coach Adam Nawalka is expected to prevail with all the big-name players in his squad.
Bayern Munich striker and team captain Robert Lewandowski is the best player in the group and is expected to lead the likes of Lukasz Fabianski, Lukasz Piszczek, Grzegorz Krychowiak, Jakub Blaszczykowski, Piotr Zielinski, and Arkadiusz Milik past the first round with flying colors.
The White Eagles had a successful Euro 2016 campaign and are coming off a 1-1 (3-5 on penalties) loss to eventual champions Portugal in the quarterfinals of the said tournament, SkySports reported.
Prediction and Predicted Lineup
The predicted result is a 3-0 rout for Poland.
Kazakhstan starting lineup (5-4-1 formation): Loria; Dmitrenko, Malyi, Akhmetov, Beisebekov, Suyumbayev; Smakov, Baizhanov, Konysbayev, Nurgaliev; Khizhnichenko
Poland starting lineup (4-4-1-1 formation): Fabianski; Piszczek, Glik, Pazdan, Jedrzejczyk; Blaszczykowski, Krychowiak, Jodlowiec, Grosicki; Milik; Lewandowski