The Chile vs Egypt (Egipto) World Cup warm-up match will have Chile host the African squad at the Nacional Stadium in Santiago on Friday, May 30 (5:30 PM Pacific).
This game may help the Argentinian manager of the Chile national team, Jorge Sampaoli, to define the 23-player list for the World Cup. Sampaoli has to quit only one player, since after dropping the O’Higgins midfielder, Pedro Pablo Hernández, due to a muscle injury, the list was reduced to 24 players.
It seems that the last player to be sent home will be one among defenders José Rojas and José Pedro Fuenzalida, and midfielder Rodrigo Millar.
For this match, their most important player, the Juventus midfielder Arturo Vidal, won’t be available, since he has a knee injury (he underwent surgery a couple of weeks ago) and he’s in doubt for the World Cup.
Chile qualified to the World Cup after finishing in the third position of the CONMEBOL qualification, behind Argentina and Colombia. They got 28 points in 16 matches, with 9 victories, 6 losses and only one draw.
In the World Cup they are in the Group B, which is one of the more difficult ones, since they’ll have to face the two teams that reached the final in South Africa 2010: Spain (June 18, Rio de Janeiro) and Netherlands (June 23, Sao Paulo), as well as Australia (June 13, Cuiabá).
On the other hand, Egypt couldn’t made their qualification to the World Cup.
In the CAF qualification, they finished at the top of Group G, winning the six matches against Guinea, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Those results allowed them to play a two-leg round against Ghana in which they had to win in order to qualify, but they lost 6-1 playing away and winning 2-1 at El Cairo wasn’t enough.
Nevertheless, they had two of the three top scorers of the qualification: Mohamed Aboutrika (who plays for Al-Ahly, the most important football club from Africa) and Mohamed Salah (Chelsea).
Despite being eliminated from the World Cup, Egypt is at the 24th place in the FIFA World Ranking (they’re the second African team best ranked behind Ivory Coast), while Chile holds the 13th position.
After the match against Chile, Egypt national team will travel to London, where they’ll face Jamaica on June 4.
This match will be a very calm one, since Chilean players don’t want to have any kind of physical trouble. In my opinion, the only players that are excited about this match are the ones who may be sent home, since they want to show the boss their skills in order to go to Brazil.
Chile vs Egypt Prediction
I think this will be a good match to watch, since, although Egypt are out of the World Cup, they’re one of the best African teams and they have Salah, a great young striker that might be worth to see. In addition, strikers Alexis Sánchez (Barcelona) and Eduardo Vargas (Valencia) will play from the beginning, so there will be great strikers in both teams.
Chile are the favorites to win the match, of course. They have a better team that Egypt and they play at home, where lots of people will go to see their national team for the last time before the World Cup. I think that Alexis Sánchez will be the key player of an entertaining match, in which the absence of Arturo Vidal will make things harder for his partners, that surely hope that he gets fit for the World Cup. My prediction is a 3-1 victory for Chile.
Chile vs Egypt Television
The Chile vs Egypt match will be televised on beIN Sports (Spanish) at 5:30 PM Pacific on Friday.
