France and Nigeria are playing on the World Cup round of 16 schedule on Monday and the matchup is live on ESPN and streaming from the WatchESPN website at 12 pm ET noon at the Estadio Nacional in Brasilia and comes after Costa Rica and the Netherlands advanced and they joined Brazil and Colombia into the next stage and now the French will try and move along against the top African team left.
Karim Benzema has been one of the best players in the tournament and he has been the leading scorer for France, who was one of the top teams in the group stages and now they are looking very strong. France is one of the favorites right behind the top teams like Brazil, Germany and Argentina and they have a deep team with plenty of talent and they can score, which is a huge deal once it gets to this stage. The team has been to the final in recent years and won just over a decade ago and now they have the chance to get past Nigeria, who has shown they can play with the big boys like they did with Argentina.
France did not look great in their final group matchup and now that the team is into this round, the mutiny and terrible performance from 2010 feels like ions ago and Benzema has been one reason why the team has been able to push that aside. Nigeria had a crazy play in their last game, as winger Michel Babatunde had his arm snapped by a teammate making a shot against the goal and now he will be out and they have been to the World Cup round of 16 twice before and last time the team did it back in 1998 and that was when the French won the tournament.
France scored eight goals in their first two games and nearly had more and they will try to continue that output in this matchup as well. Nigeria has been dealing with money problems and the players have been going at it with the federation at times from their nation and the Super Eagles may have their minds on other things and that also happened to Ghana when they had issues with their organization and France will try and take advantage of those distractions. Nigeria did not look all that impressive after a scoreless draw with Iran and a 1-0 win against Bosnia and Herzegovina and that means they will have to be at their best against France, as they have a deep side past Benzema, including Patrice Evra and Mathieu Valbuena.
France made their way through the group stages with wins against Honduras with a 3-0 win and they also won over Switzerland before a scoreless draw with Ecuador. The game against the Swiss was promising, as they scored five goals against a strong team and now France is one of the teams that can win it all. Brazil remains the favorite at home along with the Germany team and Argentina, but Benzema has France playing with confidence and they will be ready to keep things going against Nigeria.