All the footballing world and their dogs may be expecting France to come out with the self-righteous fury of past winners confronted with missing out on a trip to the World Cup and beat play-off first-leg conquerors Ukraine in Paris, but that’s just why the Yellow-Blues can prevail at monster odds.
New members of the bwin.com betting community are welcomed aboard with a free £20 bet, which could be converted into a hefty £125 if Mykhaylo Fomenko’s side can counter-attack their way to a largely unforeseen triumph.
Since shipping to Moldova in March Ukraine have gone eight straight games without conceding a goal.
Even before the mid-qualifying renaissance that brought them from the edge of ignominy to the brink of booking their Brazil tickets the Yellow-Blues were a tight defensive unit and they matched Group H winners England for miserliness, having been breached just four times.
Although they have lost two of their back four from the first-leg to suspension, neither Oleksandr Kucher nor Artem Fedetskyy played more than seven of the 11 qualifying games before their visit to the French capital.
The visitors have scored at least three times in their last three outings beyond their borders.
San Marino were spanked with an eight goal salvo but it was a 3-1 win in Poland that really served notice that Ukraine were far from dead and buried in the groups and they followed that up with a 4-0 riot in Montenegro.
England proved when grinding out a 0-0 draw in Kiev that the attacking prowess detailed in the previous paragraph may come more easily to Andriy Yarmolenko and friends when the onus is on home teams to attack them.
France were punished for failing to find a way through in Kiev and with the pressure to attack redoubled as they seek to overturn a two-goal deficit there will be plenty of space available on the counter for Yehven Konoplyanka and the aforementioned Yarmolenko.
Les Bleus have conceded in all but one of Mamadou Sakho’s five competitive international starts.
After the Yellow-Blues exposed Eric Abidal’s lack of pace and Laurent Koscielny’s sending off in the first-leg, Didier Deschamps is set to turn to Sakho and Real Madrid youngster Raphael Varane.
The pair have started just once together for their nation when shipping against the Georgians and a central twosome lacking in experience of playing together will offer Ukraine further hope of beating Hugo Lloris for the third time in this tie.
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