{"id":9950,"date":"2018-06-22T22:06:33","date_gmt":"2018-06-23T04:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nigerianews.ca\/?post_type=news&#038;p=9950"},"modified":"2018-06-22T22:07:03","modified_gmt":"2018-06-23T04:07:03","slug":"group-d-leader-croatia-may-rest-their-stars-in-the-match-against-iceland","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/nigerianews.ca\/news\/group-d-leader-croatia-may-rest-their-stars-in-the-match-against-iceland\/","title":{"rendered":"Group D Leader: Croatia may rest their stars in the match against Iceland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Both Nigeria\u2019s clash with Argentina and Iceland\u2019s match with Croatia take place simultaneously on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The Super Eagles could find themselves relying on the Group D leaders \u2013 who plan to leave big names out against Iceland \u2013 to reach the knockout stages.<\/p>\n<p>Two goals from Ahmed Musa ensured Nigeria remain in the hunt for a place in the knockout stages as they saw off Iceland in Volgograd.<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria Super Eagles needs a victory over Argentina in Saint Petersburg to reach the last 16 for the fourth time in history.<\/p>\n<p>And though a defeat to the Argentina would confirm their elimination, a draw would mean they require Croatia to do them a favour against Iceland.<\/p>\n<p>Croatia have already booked their place in the latter stages of the competition, and as such manager Zlatko Dalic has vowed to leave out some of his star players in a bid to conserve their fitness.<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria have faced Argentina four times in their previous five World Cup appearances, losing on all four occasions, but the form of the South American outfit have raised hopes that the Super Eagles can end that run.<\/p>\n<p>Despite having Lionel Messi in their number, Jorge Sampaoli\u2019s side have picked up just one point from their two games thus far, including an embarrassing 3-0 defeat to Croatia on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Both Nigeria\u2019s clash with Argentina and Iceland\u2019s match with Croatia take place simultaneously on Tuesday. The Super Eagles could find themselves relying on the Group D leaders \u2013 who plan to leave big names out against Iceland \u2013 to reach the knockout stages. Two goals from Ahmed Musa ensured Nigeria remain in the hunt for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[],"news-category":[321,323,322],"class_list":["post-9950","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-category-sports","news-category-top-news","news-category-world","entry","has-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Group D Leader: Croatia may rest their stars in the match against Iceland<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Group D Leader: Croatia may rest their stars in the match against Iceland\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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