World Cup 2010 Predictions – Who will emerge victorious?

All the debates are now taking place all over the world as everyone becomes a soccer expert. Many are looking to make money from bookmakers to soften the blow of seeing their favorites get beaten by one of the unwanted countries.

It may be worth placing your bets on this year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa before it starts, as the odds are higher. With all 32 teams named on June 1, the date of this article’s 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 place bets online, there are plenty of sites that provide that information. However, one thing you will need 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 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 required to fund your account by using a credit or debit card, and any bets you place will obviously be taken from this deposit. After your first bet is complete, you will be credited the amount of that bet as per your registration bid. This can be used on future bets, either immediately or on another day.

Using the 2010 World Cup as a topical example, you can just place a simple bet on the overall winner or you can go into much more precise details 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 need to stay 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 from the initial group stage, and maybe you can find a surprise or two there. Will France and South Africa eliminate Mexico and Uruguay in Group A? That seems like a very open group and is too close to calling for some. It’s safe to assume Italy will win Group F at a gallop, but can New Zealand compete for second place with Paraguay and Slovakia? The 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 more countries tend to start slowly and this is where most of the 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. Bookmakers are favoring Argentina to be the first to fall, and offer 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 game 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 from this early stage? Well, maybe you can, as the match schedule tends to be kinder to some teams than others. Occasionally a smaller nation can make it to this stage, as South Korea did in 2002, but it’s a long shot to go against the 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 although the African nations are getting 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 its own continent, and that too is Brazil. Does that increase the chances of an African nation winning this time?

At the moment there are three clear favorites to win in South Africa, and they are Spain, Brazil and England. The rest are a little further away but never rule out Italy and Germany. More recently, more money has been poured into the Netherlands as they appear to be in great shape ahead of the World Cup.

The ‘Golden Boot’ award 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 between them you really need to check team rosters and player goal records before choosing one above all the others.