Argentina will start their bid with a tricky match against roughnecks Iceland on Saturday. Lionel Messi and his allies struggled a bit to qualify to the group stage, and they are now up against a team that is really tough. Iceland have been steadily improving over the past years and will fight for the qualification.
Argentina looked really shaky in the CONMEBOL qualifiers, and only secured their ticket in the final match-day. They finished just two points ahead of the 6th Chile who was eliminated, so Argentina were really close to being eliminated themselves. Argentina have displayed mixed results in their warm-up friendlies ever since (3-2-0). They defeated Russia, Italy and Haiti with clean sheets, but suffered bad losses against Spain (1-6) and Nigeria (4-2). Some problems have emerged in the past weeks, with goalkeeper Sergio Romero and midfielder Manuel Lanzini suffering injury setbacks that will prevent them from playing.
Iceland turned quite a few heads their way with their performances in the 2016 EURO Cup, where they managed to reach the quarter-finals of the competition. They have been really great over the past couple of years or so and will now participate in their first ever World Cup. The Group is far from easy, as Iceland will not only have to fight Croatia for the 2nd spot, but also Nigeria who are really sturdy. Iceland have played numerous friendlies over the past months (2-4-2). Results have not been very good, as both their wins came against Indonesia. They lost to Norway, Peru, Mexico and the Czech Republic, and drew against Ghana and Qatar.
