France's national soccer team players Benzema and Mavuba arrive for a training session at the Botafogo soccer club's Santa Cruz stadium in Ribeirao Preto
France's national soccer team players Karim Benzema (L) and Rio Mavuba arrive for a training session at the Botafogo soccer club's Santa Cruz stadium in Ribeirao Preto, 336 km (208 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo, June 11, 2014. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

Final Score

France 3 Honduras 0

Overview

The tenth match of the FIFA World Cup 2014 is going to be held between France and Honduras. France is going to miss its key player Franck Ribéry who got injured just before the world cup. Honduras will try to take advantage of the absence.

Teams

France: France has always been one of the most prestigious teams in the world cup. It won in 1998 and finished second in 2006. It reached the semi-finals in 1958, 1982 and 1986. Even though a player like Ribéry can never be replaced, France has to work on different combination. Now coach Didier Deschamps will be able to use a combination that was not possible so far: playing both Karim Benzema and Olivier Giroud. France scored 8 goals against Jamaica in its pre-world cup match. Benzema scored 2 of those and set up 3 more.

Honduras: The Central American footballing nation has qualified thrice while they had their earlier campaigns in 1982 and 2010. While it was a tough journey to qualify, its pre-world cup friendly against England ended in a goalless draw. It lost against Turkey (0-2) and Israel (2-4) as well. It has a strong defensive midfielder Roger Espinoza and defender Emilio Izaguirre. The absence of a quality striker may harm the team against France.

Head to Head

These two teams never played against each other. This will be the first time.

Key Players

France: Olivier Giroud and Karim Benzema

Honduras: Roger Espinoza and Emilio Izaguirre

Date, Time & Venue

Brazil's time zone is UTC/GMT -3. The match starts at 4 pm (local time) on June 15, which means it is 5 am on June 16 in New South Wales, Australia. The match will be held at Estadio Beira-Rio in Porto Alegre.

Prediction

Honduras will fail to stop France. While it has a strong defence, repeated attacks by Giroud-Benzema will tear it apart. France will win 4-0. With this win, France will also prove that it is ready for the bigger matches, and it has already planned without Ribéry.

Group Predictions

Group A, Group B, Group C, Group D, Group E, Group F, Group G & Group H

Reference: FIFA

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au

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