World Cup Wednesday
The last round of qualifiers for the World Cup takes place today. There will still be a handful of playoff games for the final places next month, but 80% of the field will have been determined by the end the day. Many of the games are largely meaningless and without any inside information on whether one side went out drinking the night before, there’s little/no value in most of these lines.
We do have one play to recommend and that’s taking Bosnia at home to draw with Spain at +230. Spain has already secured their place and did so easily and convincingly. First, a short recap of their weekend encounter with Armenia:
Over in Armenia, Spain won 2-1 in a game whose result failed to reflect the utter dominance of the visitors – that despite the fact that Armenia equalised at one point (thereby scoring against Spain for the first ever time) and celebrated the goal as if they had just won the national lottery. Valencia’s Juan Mata restored some sanity with a penalty soon afterwards, but Spain looked as if they could hardly be bothered for most of the game, and simply passed it among themselves for long periods, with the Armenians running around in a daze, unsure of what to do.
The win made it nine out of nine for Spain, the longest consecutive run of group wins in World Cup qualifying history. They may have their work cut out to make it ten in the final game in Bosnia in midweek, but the astonishing fact is that the Spanish have now gone 42 qualifying games without defeat – the last one coming in 1993 in wonderful wonderful Copenhagen (1-0).
Bosnia has already secured their playoff place for one of the last four European berths, so this game is essentially a friendly for both teams. Spain won’t want to lose their unbeaten streak after having played so well the last two years, and Bosina is just good enough to where they’ll probably be bothered enough to turn up. If Bosnia can get a result, they’ll be able to boast of “having momentum” going into next month as Spain is favored for this game. In short, a draw would suit both teams just fine and the odds are certainly good enough. Two unit play here.
In South America, Argentina was nearly eliminated by bottom team Peru on Saturday and travel to Uruguay with the winner getting the last automatic place. Not worth betting on this game as legend Diego Maradona has turned one of the most talented teams in the world into a disorganized and mediocre team. Ecuador can leapfrog the loser of this game and earn a playoff place with a win at already qualified Chile (Standings here). These games both kickoff at 6:00 Eastern and I promise finding an internet feed with one or both of these games will be well worth the effort.
