Dave Farrar has been the main football commentator at Eurosport for 8 years now, covering two World Cups and two European Championships. He also works extensively as a european football expert for the BBC, and covers Serie A for the Italian TV channel RAI. Dave also presents Friday Night Marketwatch for Betfair Radio, and is a keen, if misguided gambler. His decision, in a tipping column for the Sportsman newspaper, to change his 2006 World Cup headline tip from Italy to Argentina at the last minute still haunts him.

In a previous life, Dave was an actor, and has put those (debatable) skills to use in recent weeks, pretending not to care about his beloved Reading FC’s relegation from the Premier League. “Oh well,” he says with a fixed and slightly worrying grin, “at least we’ll have a chance of winning a game or two now.”

Dave has covered many other sports for the BBC, Eurosport and other worldwide channels, including golf, swimming, snooker, cricket, athletics and ice hockey, but European football remains his great love. Amongst his achievements while working in Europe have been to attend Edwin Van Der Sar’s last training session at Ajax (when he (Edwin, not Dave) played as a centre forward and scored), get a round of applause from Roberto Mancini after volleying the ball back from the sidelines at a Sampdoria training session, and score the winner for PSG against Marseille in the French Cup Final . (Two of these stories are true, he may have dreamt the other.) Dave also unwittingly invented a catchphrase in Slovenia after commentating on Milenko Acimovic’s half-way line winner for Slovenia against Ukraine in the play off for a place in Euro 2000. “David Beckham, where are you now?” may not be Shakepeare, but the kids in Llubjana seem to love it.

• World Cup Play-offs Betting: Portugal v Bosnia
• Serie A Betting: Go against the flow in Inter v Roma
• Champions League Betting: Maccabi Haifa v Juventus
• Champions League Betting: AC Milan v Real Madrid