The second round of South American World Cup qualifiers gets underway on Tuesday night, with Ecuador hosting them. Ecuador, who lost in the first round, will be looking to pick up their first points of the qualifying campaign, while visitors Uruguay will be looking to make it back-to-back wins early in the qualifying campaign.
Ecuador fell to a 1-0 defeat against on Friday night, with Rionel Messi once again stepping up to the plate at a crucial point in the game to help Argentina score their only goal late in the second half. Despite the loss for the hosts, their best effort defensive performance was certainly a highlight of what they were able to get, allowing Argentina only four shots on target and creating three of their own.
While they may have expected a difficult match against the world champions, they will see this match as one of the better opportunities to score match points. That loss against Argentina ended Ecuador's streak of winning three games in a row, including a 2-1 win over Australia, a 1-0 win over Bolivia, and most recently a 3-1 thrashing in June.
Uruguay got their qualifying campaign off to a perfect start on Saturday with a 3-1 win over Chile in their opening match, with Nicolas de la Cruz scoring twice and Federico Valverde adding a brace, a victory that puts Uruguay in second place in the standings behind Brazil.
With the win, Uruguay have now won four in a row and are unbeaten in their last six matches, while scoring two or more goals in five of them.
Although Uruguay are seen as non-favorites in this matchup, their recent record against Ecuador is quite impressive, having won three of their last four matchups and gaining two more points than Ecuador in their 18 matches in the last qualifying campaign.
While the visiting team has dominated this matchup over the past few years, Ecuador is a very strong team at home and has won the last three games against this opponent at home. We expect this to be a free flowing and entertaining game, but we predict the home team will win by a goal.
