[attach id=261809 size="medium"]Oscar Tabarez[/attach]

Uruguay will be without captain Diego Lugano as they look to advance to the semi-finals of the Confederations Cup tonight.

The defender picked up bookings in the matches against Spain and Nigeria so will miss the clash against Group B whipping boys Tahiti with Liverpool centre-half Sebastian Coates likely to take his place.

The South Americans know that they will advance to the semi-finals if they can better Nigeria’s result against Spain and a win is virtually assured against the islanders who have lost their two games so far in this tournament 6-1 and 10-0.

That means Oscar Tabarez may choose to rest some of his stars with Edinson Cavani an obvious candidate as a yellow card would rule him out of the next match.

And although the Uruguay coach is not taking a victory for granted, he admits that his team are big favourites to make the semi-finals.

“No match is won before playing but the more likely scenario is that,” he told reporters.

“We will be called spoilsports but we’ll take that as a compliment.”

Tahiti have already achieved their stated aim coming into the tournament of scoring a goal and goalkeeper Mikael Roche is just hopeful they can limit the damage against Uruguay.

“Against Uruguay we need to avoid getting blown away like we did in the Spain game,” he told www.fifa.com.

“We need to leave less space for their strikers, who can read the game very quickly, and at least make life hard for them.”