Colombia vs Paraguay Prediction and Betting Tips: Three tips for Copa America clash

Colombia and Paraguay kick off their Copa America campaigns on Monday night at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. 

This Group D clash pits two teams with contrasting recent form against each other.

Colombia enter the tournament on a remarkable 23-match unbeaten run, which includes impressive wins over Brazil and Spain in the last eight months.

Paraguay have won only two of their last nine matches and are struggling to score goals.

La Albirroja have been a blunt instrument under head coach Daniel Garnero, managing only two goals in their seven games since he took over.

Garnero has yet to unlock the goalscoring potential of Ramon Sosa and Adam Bareiro, who have both delivered a decent amount of goals in Argentinean football.

The stats from the current World Cup qualifying programme are pretty shameful with Paraguay scoring only once from 69 total shots with an expected goals of 5.47.

The xG figure may be slightly misleading, however, as Paraguay tend to pepper their opponent’s goal — or fans — with long-range efforts of variable quality.

They rarely get behind defences and will probably struggle to create much against a Colombian backline that has conceded just six times in their last nine games and kept five clean sheets during that sequence.

Colombia are on an eight-game winning streak and have been averaging 1.8 goals per game during a run that has seen them beat Brazil and Spain, so they should be able to win with a clean sheet in Houston.

Colombia’s Jhon Arias looks ideally placed to exploit the defensive weaknesses that Paraguay have shown in recent games.

The Fluminense midfielder plays centrally for his club and rarely scores, but he has been given greater licence to get forward for his country.

Nestor Lorenzo deploys Arias on the right of his preferred 4-2-3-1 formation and that seems to suit the 26-year-old down to the ground.

He was brilliant in Colombia’s 1-0 win over Spain at London Stadium in March and has since scored in each of his three international appearances for los Cafeteros.

Paraguay defend in a narrow 4-4-2 with the aim of pushing their opponents out wide, but that may suit Colombia as it will enable left-winger Luis Diaz to see more of the ball.

Arias will drift into the box from the right in a bid to get on the end of the Liverpool star’s crosses and he will have taken note of how Chile’s Victor Davila did that to score twice against Paraguay in a friendly this month.

Colombia midfielder Jefferson Lerma has collected 60 cautions in his six seasons in English football at roughly one every three and a half games.

His ratio for the national team is very similar with the Crystal Palace star having been awarded 12 yellow cards in 43 appearances.

Lerma looks like a solid candidate for a card in Monday’s match given the likely battle in midfield between two tough-tackling teams.

Lerma’s foul count is actually not as bad as you might think with the Eagles man penalised around 40 times per season in his four Premier League campaigns.

But he is prone to making the sort of desperate lunges that usually persuade referees to reach for their pockets.