The Estadio Do Maracana will host the match between Colombia and Uruguay today with Colombia ringing the changes around their squad. James Rodriguez is likely to get recalled to action along with Teofilo Gutierrez and Carlos Bacca who is fit for selection after getting over a thigh injury. In the Uruguayan dressing room Diego Forlan will hope to be selected in place of the banned Luis Suarez, although Edinson Cavani is also available to lead the line. Unfortunately for Diego Lugano, his injury misery will continue as he struggles to recover from a knee injury.

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Match Preview: No Falcao, no Luis Suarez, but you know what? This should still be an interesting match to watch.

While it’s not the best known team in this World Cup, Colombia was one of the most impressive teams in group play, winning all three of its matches. The Colombians outscored Greece, Ivory Coast and Japan by a score of 9-2, never scoring less than two goals in any single match. So with or without Falcao, there hasn’t been a lot of trouble finding the back of the net.

Colombia has also had six differnet players score its goals, with James “Don’t Call Me James” Rodriguez scoring three of them, and Jackson “It’s Perfectly Acceptable To Call Me Jackson” Martinez scoring twice. Rodriguez is truly the center of this attack, though as he also had two assists to go with his three goals, and those two assists only trail Juan Cadrado’s three for the most on the team.

The general rule so far has been that any time Rodriguez has had the ball near the box Colombia is a very real threat to score.

As for Uruguay, while Luis Suarez is attending hunger management classes, this is still a team with talent. Suarez has scored half of Uruguay’s four goals in this tournament, but Paris Saint-Germain didn’t pay reportedly €64.5 to get him from Napoli because he was terrible. The scoring load will likely be on his shoulders if Uruguay wants to get past Colombia in this match, but if there’s reason for concern it’s that in the one match Uruguay already had to play without Suarez in this World Cup it lost to Costa Rica 3-1, with it’s only goal coming via a Cavani penalty.

Possible Lineups:

Colombia: Ospina; Zuniga, Armero, Sanchez, Zapata; Yepes, Cuadrado, Aguilar, Gutierrez; Rodriguez, Ibarbo.

Mario Yepes is expected to be fit on time for Saturday after recovering from a hamstring injury.

Uruguay: Muslera; Caceres, Lugano, Godin, Pereira; Gargano, Arevalo, Rodriguez, Forlan; Stuani, Cavani.

Uruguay will be without star striker Luis Suarez following his 9 international matches suspension and four month ban from football.