Morocco vs Croatia

Marcelo Brozovic to be booked 

Morocco meet Croatia in their opening game in Group F. TipMan Tips believes all three teams behind Belgium will fancy their chances of squeezing through and so should produce some very competitive games. 

Morocco and Croatia both have high averages of fouls committed per match with both sides averaging over 10 fouls per game.

Argentine referee Fernando Rapallini averages a massive 6.33 cards per game over his last 97 matches and he has issued four or more cards in 84% of his games. 

Marcelo Brozovic, the anchor in Croatia’s midfield, hasn’t featured as regularly for club but he’s a main stay in the national team and will be asked questions with Chelsea’s tricky Hakim Ziyach, who is surely going to cause him plenty of problems. 

Brozovic has played 10 games for Inter Milan this season and received five yellow cards and has had no less than seven yellow cards per season for the last seven seasons. 

Belgium vs Canada

Steven Vitoria to be booked 

Canada feature at the World Cup for only the second ever time and the first time since 1986. They may have hoped for an easier first game as they come up against a top Belgian side who are serial contenders in the big tournaments. 

As you can imagine, the European side will dominate the ball here with Canada looking to hurt them on the counterattack with some exciting young players, but this should play into our hands for bookings. 

Referee Janny Simazwe averages 3.29 cards per game which isn’t a huge average but this is a top-level game for him and we saw the Qatari referee who hadn’t averaged loads of cards feel the pressure and issue six cards in the Wales vs USA match. 

Steven Vitoria is a regular in the referees notebook and has been booked on two of his last three starts for Canada. He’s been averaging a yellow card every 0.62 games and has he’s got older the cards have become more regular. Last season he played 19 games for club and received 11 yellow cards and two reds. 

Vitoria up against some of Europe’s best attackers is surely going to be tested multiple times here.