Serbia vs Bolivia Predictions, Betting Tips and Match Previews

With the World Cup fast approaching, Serbia will have been somewhat disappointed not to get their preparations off the to best possible start on Monday. Not only did they lose to Chile, but they lost to a Chile team that was missing several key players. From a performance point of view, the Serbs weren’t too bad, though two aspects of their display stuck out for negative reasons. Firstly, Mladen Krstajić’s men were easy to break down defensively, while they were wasteful in and around the opposition box. Improvement is required in both areas if they’re to make headway in Russia.

Bolivia won’t be at the World Cup next week, so they come into this match with nothing to play for, though this lack of pressure could allow them to operate freely, much like Chile did against Serbia at the start of the week. The South American outfit arrive in Austria having drawn 0-0 with South Korea on Wednesday evening, so they may fancy their chances of frustrating their European counterparts.

From a creativity point of view, Serbia didn’t look too bad against Chile last time out. Mladen Krstajić appears to have plenty of players capable of forging opportunities at his disposal, though players who can put the ball in the back of the net with regularity are seemingly thin on the ground. Aleksandar Mitrović, who started up top last time out, certainly puts himself about, while he’s a handful for defenders, but he gave the impression that scoring regular goals may prove to be beyond him at the highest level of international football.

Despite not facing the best opponents in recent times, Serbia have scored more than once in just two of their last six matches, while they’ve scored at least twice in just four of their last twelve friendlies. They’re by no means a poor team and they do have some useful attacking players, though prolific they’re not.

Considering that Serbia don’t exactly look like a team who’re going to score goals left, right and centre in Russia, the Bolivians could easily keep things tight on Saturday evening. Prior to their match against South Korea, Bolivia hadn’t been keeping too many clean sheets, though they didn’t have much trouble shutting out the World Cup-bound Asian outfit, so another reasonable defensive performance wouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

In all honesty, given that Bolivia, who’ve now failed to score in each of their last three fixtures, are lacking offensively, coupled with the fact that they do tend to be breached in most of their games, it would be disappointing if Serbia couldn’t come out on top. However, given their own lack of goals, Krstajić’s men probably won’t blow the visitors away.

Based on the recent performances of both, a bet on Serbia, who do appear to have more about them in terms of overall quality and creativity with the ball, to win in low-key fashion stands out.