World Cup Group G: Tunisia vs England Preview and Betting Tips

The 2018 World Cup is underway and England will kick off their tournament with a clash against Tunisia on Monday night in Volgograd.

The Three Lions head in to the tournament looking relaxed and in decent form so they’ll be quietly confident of causing a few upsets in Russia this summer.

Gareth Southgate’s men will take on Panama and Belgium as well as Monday’s opponents, Tunisia, in Group G so anything other than a win in their first game will be considered a major disappointment.

Belgium are favourites to win the group and are among the leading contenders to win the World Cup outright but England should have more than enough quality to progress to the knockout stages and from there, anything can happen.

The worry for England is that they failed to make it out of the group at the 2014 World Cup and have only made it past the last-16 once in the last four tournaments, so it’s fair to say they’ve under-performed on the big stage in recent years.

However, Tunisia should be good opposition as they’ve failed to win a single game in their last three World Cups and they only made it to the quarter-finals of the African Cup of Nations in 2017.

Team news

England only have one concern heading in to the game as Marcus Rashford picked up a knee injury earlier this week and has been working in the gym away from the squad in recent days.

However, the Manchester United forward returned to full training on Friday afternoon and is expected to be passed fit to face Tunisia on Monday evening after saying on social media his ‘niggle’ was nothing to worry about.

Key man

Tottenham’s Harry Kane has been handed the captains armband and it’s safe to say he’s England’s most dangerous player following another sensational season in north London that say him score 41 goals in 48 games.

The pressure will be on the 24-year-old to replicate that kind of form for his country this summer but Kane has a good head on his shoulders and shouldn’t let the weight of expectation affect his performances on the pitch.

Kane is certain to lead the line up front on Monday and he’ll be confident of getting a few chances against a vulnerable Tunisian defence, so odds of 13/5 on him opening the scoring look tempting.

Betting tips

A look at the football betting odds shows us that England are the heavy favourites to win the game at odds of 4/9 while you can get Tunisia at 17/2 with many leading bookmakers. England have plenty of firepower going forward and I expect them to create enough chances to score at least a couple of goals so I fancy the Three Lions to secure a 2-0 win – which is available at odds of 9/2.

For those who want even more value, you can get 6/5 on England winning at both half-time and full-time while if we throw Kane in as first goalscorer in a 2-0 England win, we get odds of 8/1. That would be my long-shot bet for this game but I fully expect Southgate’s side to get off to a routine win at the World Cup on Monday.

If you want to watch all the England action this summer check out this infographic from ExpressVPN that shows how to stream all the matches in Russia.