Portugal vs. Ghana Betting Tips: A Selecao to dominate possession in their World Cup opener

Portugal take on Ghana on Thursday with the game kicking-off at 4pm in the UK. We’ve got Anthony Eadson on hand to preview the action and provide us with two tips for the Group H clash.

These two sides faced each other at the World Cup back in 2014 with Cristiano Ronaldo securing a win for A Selecao on that occasion. Ronaldo is sure to make the headlines whatever his contribution after his explosive interview with Piers Morgan last week, but on the pitch his side are 12/1 to lift the trophy on December 18 in what will be Ronaldo’s final World Cup.

Of course, Portugal are not a one man team and it’s not all about Ronaldo, as we have seen at Manchester United recently. Fernando Santos has a squad that has rammed full of quality from start to finish with the likes of Manchester City trio Bernardo Silva, Joao Cancelo and Ruben Dias, along with other Premier League talents Ruben Neves and Bruno Fernandes. 

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Ghana will be looking forward to their meeting with Uruguay in Group H, with the villain of 2012 Luis Suarez lying in wait in what will be their final group game after facing Portugal and South Korea. 

This group looks particularly hard to predict although the bookmakers do not fancy The Black Stars chances of winning this opening fixture, with 9/2 on show for them to do so. Premier League players Tariq Lamptey, Thomas Partey and Jordan Ayew all should feature in the starting lineup on Thursday.

The first of two selections we are highlighting on Thursday comes with Unibet where we are backing Portugal to have Over 57.5% ball possession in the game. This is available at 19/20, and can be found by going to the match page on Unibet and then navigating to the ‘Advanced Stats’ section.

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Portugal come into this game as the 2/5 favourites with the bookmakers to take all three points and with Ghana being strong defensively and expected to sit back, we think Fernando Santos’ side will see plenty of the ball. Portugal have players who can dictate the play and we see them controlling the tempo here against Ghana. All things considered 19/20 looks a generous price for Over 57.5%.

Following on from the same hypothesis that Portugal will see plenty of the ball, we’ve started our second tip with Ruben Dias to attempt over 82.5 passes. Only three players in the Premier League are averaging more passes per game this season than Manchester City’s Ruben Dias who across four games at the Euros last summer averaged 81.5. At those European Championships, Dias made 99 passes in a group stage game with France and we think we will see another large total against Ghana on Wednesday.

Things haven’t exactly been a bed of roses for Cristiano Ronaldo in recent weeks and we are backing him to find his way into the referee’s notebook. Portugal’s all time top-scorer has been shown 22 bookings when representing his nation throughout his career and he has also been shown a yellow in three of his last five appearances for Manchester United. 

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