Austria v Uruguay Betting: Teams to be slow out of blocks in Foda's first match in charge of hosts

Uruguay will continue their preparations for World Cup 2018 when they travel to take on Austria in an international friendly fixture in Vienna on Tuesday night.

Austria arrived at last summer’s European Championships with many neutral observers considering Marcel Koller’s charges as dark horses to win the tournament, having won no fewer than nine of their last 10 matches in qualifying for the competition.

Koller's men, though, fell well short of those expectations in France - crashing out at the group stages after winning just one point from their three games - and the recent World Cup qualification campaign also offered precious little for the Europeans to smile about.

FEDERICO PARRA

The Austrians finished in a lowly fourth place in Group D and Koller has paid the price for those failures, for his contract will not be renewed when it expires at the end of this year and German Franco Foda will take charge of the team for the first time on Tuesday before he officially takes up the reins until January.

The odds compilers offer 17/10 (2.70) that Foda’s tenure begins with victory in Vienna, while the same firm go 23/10 (3.30) that the match ends in a stalemate; Uruguay played out a goalless draw with Poland in an international friendly fixture on Friday night, and the visitors are a 31/20 (2.55) chance with Betfair Sportsbook to win this one.

Tabarez’s team will be without their talisman Luis Suarez, who has been omitted from the squad at the request of Barcelona, but the South Americans have no shortage of quality in the final third with Edison Cavani in contention to play in Uruguay’s final fixture of the year; Cavani is certainly a man in form, for he has scored 17 goals in 16 games for Paris Saint-Germain this term.

Uruguay, though, have failed to find the net in four of their last six matches, while there have been fewer than three goals scored in eight of the last nine matches that Austria have played; Betfair Sportsbook go 8/11 (1.73) that there are no more than two goals in this game.

With nothing at stake, this match may be something of a slow burner and the 5/4 (2.25) quote for the first goal to be scored after the 29th minute of the match in the Austrian capital could offer decent value for punters ahead of Tuesday's tussle.