Uruguay vs. South Korea Betting Tips: Back Nunez to find the net in Qatar

Uruguay take on South Korea on Thursday and we've got our man Tom Winch on hand to provide us with his best bets for the game.

The Education City Stadium will host the opening game in Group H on Thursday afternoon as Uruguay and South Korea battle it out in what is a strong group, the South American side have qualified for the World Cup finals for the fourth successive time whilst it’s now 10 in a row for the Asian outfit.

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Looking into the markets there’s little surprise to see Uruguay as favourites, best priced at 3/4 with Paulo Bento’s squad outsiders at 9/2 with the draw around the 5/2 mark. The goal line is set at 2.25 which is priced up at odds against, the bookmakers aren’t expecting a high scoring affair in this one.

Heung-Min Son is South Korea’s best player by some distance and it’s not quite confirmed whether he’ll take part in this opening clash due to a face injury, it’ll be a huge boost to the nation if he does make an appearance.

It’s never a nice feeling when backing a bet like this one, a dodgy back pass or penalty kick could kill all hopes at any given time but with a Uruguayan side who have kept teams out more often than not in the group stages in recent tournaments, the price looks to provide some nice value.

In their previous three World Cup group stage clashes, Uruguay have registered seven clean sheets which is rather impressive. Diego Alonso, who was appointed manager in December 2021 has a huge array of talent within his squad, both young and old and has said himself that “the players and I want to become world champions”.

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Uruguay have won seven games since their current manager was appointed, six of those wins saw the opposition fail to score which shows how consistent they are defensively and are a tricky side to break down.

South Korea have been beaten without finding the back of the net in back to back tournaments, it’s not always easy judging how good they are due to their qualifying process being somewhat straightforward with very little quality within the other nations squads.

I don’t think there’s many who doubt Darwin Nunez’s quality despite his challenging start at Liverpool, the 23 year old is in decent goalscoring form and managed to score in his previous outing for the national team.

Darwin is expected to partner up with Luis Suarez in a front two for Uruguay which should see them cause plenty of problems, Suarez is a little shorter in terms of price to score but at a grand old age of 35, he’ll more likely be the player who’ll be taken off by the coach.

Darwin’s key attribute is his movement, he more often than not gets himself into a great goal scoring position and with this being his debut tournament, he’ll be more than desperate to open up his account in Al Rayyan against a side they’ll be expected to overcome.

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