Gary Neville has predicted that Liverpool’s Ibrahima Konate will be on the losing side in Sunday’s World Cup final.
Konate was brilliant on Wednesday night as France made it to consecutive finals. They’ll perhaps start as slight favourites to retain their crown against Argentina in Doha. But, speaking on the Sky Sports World Cup Podcast, Neville thinks otherwise.
“I’m going to go Messi and I’m going to go Argentina,” he predicted. “It just feels like, when you think about how poor Argentina were. Messi has just walked around at this tournament and then delivered individual moments. You don’t see him for 89 minutes and then all of a sudden this moment! Even the other night against Gvardiol, he gets past Gvardiol and then he gets back at him, you would never have got back at Messi before.
“So he’s not just beating players, he’s not creating magical moments through manipulating the ball.
“Konate and Varane were brilliant against Morocco, but I’m going to go with how they played against England against better forwards and I think Alvarez and Messi will just make Konate and Varane make mistakes.”
Konate didn’t play against England actually Gary. In fact, we’ve barely seen the 23-year-old put a foot wrong since he joined Liverpool. Playing against Messi is, of course, incredibly difficult, but we’re backing Ibou to come out on top.
Konate jostling for starting spot in showpiece final
It sounds as though Neville is predicting that Konate will start for France. Whether he has any information privy to that fact is unlikely, but it’s encouraging nonetheless.
Less encouraging is the pundit’s analysis of our No.5. It seems like Neville is basing his judgement of Konate from Dayot Upamecano’s display against England.
Upamecano may have ended up on the winning side that night, but he didn’t play well. The Bayern defender arguably should have been penalised for a foul on Bukayo Saka in the lead up to France’s first goal and was generally rash in his defensive work.
There was an argument that Konate should have come in for Upamecano regardless of the illness that ruled him out of Wednesday’s semi-final. After another strong Ibou showing, those arguments will have only grown louder.
It remains to be seen whether Upamecano will be better in time to face Messi and co on Sunday. If he is selected though, we’d be nervous if we were France fans.
Against the genius of Messi and the quality of Alvarez, Konate looks like a safer bet. France may well lose on Sunday, but with the Liverpool’s £35m centre-back in the side, we think they’ll stand a much better chance.
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