World Cup value

Just now, the football world is relatively calm in the sense that the people who are getting excited about it are generally ardent football fans. But pretty soon that will all change and the World Cup will become all-consuming and pretty frantic. There will be comprehensive media coverage and every detail will be analysed to the nth degree.

So now – while things remain calm - is the time to have a betting on Bet365. But who should that be on?

Well if World Cup history has taught us anything – it’s that things generally revert to mean and the same nations tend to dominate – on the whole. There have been two recent “aberrations” where this rule was not obeyed. The first was in France 98 when the home side won (beating Brazil in the final) and second was in the last World Cup in South Africa when Spain were debutante winners (building on their previous success in Euro 2008 which they uniquely managed to replicate in 2012) beating three time runners-up, Holland.

So if we concentrate on history and try to ignore all the noise about current form etc., then the winner will be either Brazil, Italy, Argentina, Germany, Spain, or maybe France. And of all these teams there are two which present anomalous odds for the shrewd gambler who knows his / her history – and these are the two teams with the best international records of all, namely Brazil and Italy.

These two countries have triumphed in the World Cup no fewer than nine times between them, with Brazil winning five and Italy four. Add to those figures the fact that both teams have been runner-up a couple of times and you can quickly see how strong they always are when the World Cup comes around.

But whilst Brazil are understandably hot favourites to be lifting the World Cup on Sunday July 13th in the Maracanã given their home advantage – Italy are remarkably good odds at a best-priced 28-1.

And when you see anomalously good value like this, you should generally take it. Remember, the overall object of the gambler isn’t to win every bet, but rather to seek value and to come out ahead steadily on a three steps forward, two steps back type basis. That’s all any of us can hope to do when making many bets over a long period of time and that’s how the truly professional gamblers achieve it in any walk of life.

Remember that Italy didn’t a match in their qualifying group and always seem to get it together for the World Cup. They last won it in 2006 and even managed to reach the final of Euro 2012 (against Spain) despite having a lacklustre squad by their own high standards. This is what Italy always seem to do when the international chips are down.

Also, Italy have been drawn in Group D alongside England, Costa Rica, and Uruguay and will surely go through to the knockout stages after which anything is possible. So grab that value while you still can.