Brazil v Ivory Coast, Sunday 20th June, 7.30pm
There’s a cracking game in store at Soccer City on Sunday night, with the match likely to more evenly-matched than the odds suggest. After all, the Cote d’Ivoire had the better of the play against Portugal on Tuesday and will fancy their chances of getting at least another draw from the game in Johannesburg. Sporting Bet offer 14/5 that the contest finishes all square, something which would mean that the Ivory Coast simply need to beat North Korea by a two-goal margin to ensure qualification from Group G.
Brazil are the 8/11 favourites (Canbet) to land another three points, although they produced a relatively ordinary performance against the People’s Republic on Tuesday night. The Samba Kings looked short of ideas before Maicon fluked one in at the near post, although they did have a lively performer in Robinho. While the forward flopped at Manchester City, he’s highly-motivated for his national team and can be backed at 11/2 (William Hill) to open the scoring.
The Ivory Coast are available at 5/1 (Ladbrokes) to win the match and they seemed to get stronger as the match wore on against Portugal. They were slightly lucky that Cristiano Ronaldo only managed to hit a post in the first half from a free-kick, although we should note that they were without their leader and talisman until the last twenty-five minutes of the match. Didier Drogba will surely appear from the very beginning of this crunch Group G game and the Chelsea striker can be backed at 9/1 (William Hill) to break the deadlock.
Indeed, with Drogba often proving unplayable and also being such a big game player, it’s well worth considering a bet on the Ivorians at 7/2 (Paddy Power) on the Draw No Bet market. Either way, we should expect this to be a tight contest and Sporting Bet’s quote of 8/11 about Under 2.5 Goals looks like a price worth taking.
