World Cup 2010 Predictions – Who will emerge victorious?

All the debates now take place all over the world as everyone becomes a football expert. Many look to make money with bookmakers to soften the blow of seeing their favorites get beaten by one of the unwanted countries.

It may be worth placing your bets for this year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa before it starts, as the odds are higher. With the 32 teams named as of June 1, the date of this writing, now is the time to check the match schedules and see who will advance to the later stages.

If you don’t know how to bet online, there are plenty of sites that give you that information. One thing you will need, however, is an account with one or more online betting companies. The vast majority, if not all now, will offer you incentives to sign up with them, usually by matching your first bet up to a maximum value; this will be offered as ‘free bets’ and is definitely a good way to start.

You will then be asked to fund your account using a credit or debit card, and any bets you place will obviously be taken from this deposit. Upon completion of your first bet, you will be credited with the amount of that bet as per your signup offer. This can be used on future bets, either immediately or on another day.

Using the 2010 World Cup as a topical example, you can simply place a simple bet on the outright winner, or you can go into much finer detail, such as who you think will qualify for the quarter-finals, which game will be the first card red. show up and so on. For those more detailed bets, you should keep up to date with as much information as possible regarding player suspensions and injuries, as they will weaken teams as the tournament progresses.

You can make a fair bet on who will qualify in the opening group stage, and maybe you can find a surprise or two there. Will France and South Africa knock out Mexico and Uruguay in Group A? That seems like a very open group and too close to call for some. It’s safe to assume that Italy will win Group F at a gallop, but can New Zealand compete for second place with Paraguay and Slovakia? Bookies don’t think so, but do you think it’s worth betting?

For betting on the first group stage there is a good chance of getting off to a good start as some of the countries with more countries tend to start slowly and this is where most clash results traditionally occur. An example is that Argentina qualified by a very narrow margin, and one of the qualified nations always seems to be eliminated during the group stage. The bookies are favoring Argentina to be the first to go down, and are offering generous odds in this regard. More worrying is that Diego Maradona has promised to run naked through Buenos Aires if they win the final, so let’s hope they beat them early because no one will be able to sleep at night until they lose. Their first match is against Nigeria, and they will remember losing to Cameroon at the same stage in 1990.

So on to the later stages and can you predict the semi-finalists for this early stage? Well, maybe you can, as the game schedule is usually kinder to some teams than others. Occasionally a smaller nation can get to this stage, as South Korea did in 2002, but it’s a long shot to go against key nations.

It makes sense to bet that one of the most dominant footballing nations will be the outright winner, only seven countries have won the World Cup and while the African nations are growing stronger, they don’t seem ready to walk. away with the football jackpot. A couple of interesting facts are that (1) only two countries have won the world cup twice in a row, Italy and Brazil, and no one has held it since 1962. Also (2) only one country has won a world cup outside of their own continent, and that is also Brazil. Does that increase the chances of an African nation winning this time?

Right now, there are three clear favorites to win in South Africa, and they are Spain, Brazil and England. The rest are a bit further but never rule out Italy and Germany. More recently, more money has been invested in the Netherlands as they seem to be in great shape heading into the World Cup.

The ‘Golden Boot’ prize always attracts healthy bets; this is the trophy presented to the top individual goalscorer in the final, the english money is in the hands of Wayne Rooney, but every country has a goalscorer among them, you really need to check the team lists and goal records of the players before choosing one above all others.