Russia and Serbia heading for stalemate
Russia vs Serbia - 03/09/2020
3362
League B provides us with an intriguing Group 3 clash to look forward to on Thursday evening when hosts, Russia, take on promoted Serbia, at the VTB Arena in Moscow with both teams keen to challenge for a place in League A at the end of this Nations League campaign.
It’s a case of ‘as you were’ for Russia who narrowly missed out on progressing through to the knockout rounds in the competition, finishing runners-up to Group 2 winners, Sweden, so they’ll be keen to go one step better this time around.
Russia made a solid and impressive start to the group stages as they recorded a 2-1 win on the road in Turkey and then held Sweden to a 0-0 draw at home before doing the double over Turkey with a 2-0 home win in the corresponding fixture.
This set up a ‘winner-takes-all’ clash with Sweden which they lost 2-0 away from home but the subsequent European Championship qualifying campaign was a successful one as Russia finished runners-up to Group I winners, Belgium, thus achieving automatic qualification.
Onto Serbia, and they too enjoyed a successful period last year as they achieved automatic promotion from League C by winning Group 4 by a two-point margin ahead of runners-up, Romania, to take their place in League B of this season’s Nations League.
Four wins from their six group matches set Serbia up nicely having collected wins against Lithuania (home and away) and Montenegro (home and away) while holding Romania to draws in the corresponding home and away legs to finish top of the group.
Serbia have also put together some impressive displays away from home too on the international scene as the visitors have suffered just the one defeat out of their last 12 matches which was a heavy 5-0 thrashing at the hands of Ukraine, but seven wins and four draws suggest they’ll be tough to beat in Moscow on Thursday night.
Looking at the head-to-head results and Russia have the slight advantage as they’ve won two of the previous four encounters but the last two meetings have both ended up in 1-1 draws in Dubai and Monaco respectively.
The overall form of both teams heading into this Group 3 opener seem fairly evenly matched and this clash could end in another stalemate.
Home team
Away team
Pred
Correct score
Avg. goals
Weather conditions
Coef.
Score
Live
coef.
UNL
174736
X
0 - 0
0.91
16°
3.30
2.10
3.30
3.64
-1
1
1
3 - 1(0 - 0)
Home
Football 
Basketball
Hockey
American Football
Baseball
Rugby
Volleyball
Handball
Esoccer
