Los Angeles \/ Tuesday, 16 June \/ 02:00<\/p>\n
I read an amazing stat about New Zealand, which is that they only have around 60 professional footballers across the world. <\/p>\n
As a nation, just by getting to this World Cup they are punching well above their weight, and it would be massive for them to get their first win in their third finals. <\/p>\n
They have got some decent players, too, like ‘the Wood-chopper’ Chris Wood up top and their playmaker, Sarpreet Singh, and I am also looking forward to seeing Motherwell midfielder Elijah Just, who is a good footballer.<\/p>\n
They are up against an Iran team with a lot of off-field issues, and won’t even be based in the United States where they play their three group games, but in Mexico.<\/p>\n
A lot of their players play in the Persian Gulf League, which has been suspended since March, and they are an ageing squad anyway. <\/p>\n
So, it won’t be easy for them and I am going to back ‘the Wood-chopper’ to get the winner.<\/p>\n
Sutton’s prediction: 0-1<\/p>\n
AI’s prediction: 1-0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles \/ Tuesday, 16 June \/ 02:00 I read an amazing stat about New Zealand, which is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-493069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}