Sunday’s second last sixteen match takes place at Soccer City and Mexico will be looking for revenge after being beaten by Argentina at this stage four years ago. While Javier Aguirre’s team deserved to qualify from Group A, they have a couple of flaws which might result in them being second best against Diego Maradona’s team.

Defensively, they are prone to making silly errors, as they demonstrated against England and Holland in the warm-up matches for the World Cup, not to mention the first game against South Africa. It will be interesting to see how they cope with the returning Carlos Tevez and Gonzalo Higuain, who were both rested for the South Korea match.

While Mexico might have plenty of possession, Guillermo Franco has missed a series of chances and it’s puzzling that the manager doesn’t start with Javier Hernandez, who has the pace to trouble a creaking Argentina defence. The favourites will have Lionel Messi looking for his first goal and it’s surely an impossibility that he’ll go the whole tournament without scoring.

PREDICTION: ARGENTINA -1 ON ASIAN HANDICAP @ 1.90 with Ladbrokes