Back Page Betting: England are an interesting bet to win Under 19 Euros

Internationals / Ralph Ellis / 14 July 2008 / Leave a Comment

A hungry, united, promising squad have qualified for a tournament. It can only be England. Under-19s.

Wayne Rooney seems to have come back from his summer with a few extra pounds on his waistline, as well as a good few less in his wallet after paying for what seemed like the world's most expensive wedding. The Daily Mail catches a picture of him in Manchester United's first friendly of the season looking, shall we say kindly, a tad on the tubby side. I guess that's another one of the weighty issues raised by England's failure to reach Euro 2008.

At least we have qualified for another set of Euros, though - and the Under 19 youngsters are into action for the first time this afternoon in their finals against their hosts in the Czech Republic. And it's a surprise, bearing in mind the size of the audience which built up following the Under 21s success last summer, that only the Mail has given the competition any significant space this morning.

Okay, so Neil Warnock has called it "a stupid tournament". He's in a fit of pique because his talented youngster Victor Moses has had to join up rather than do pre-season training at Crystal Palace. But then as the Mail's Neil Moxley suggests: "It's not for the first time in his life that Warnock may be wide of the mark".

Back home the games are being shown live on Eurosport and will build a decent audience, especially if England come through a group which also includes Italy and Greece. And there are also some good betting opportunities if you can avoid punting on the reputation of countries at senior level and do some research on the players turning out at the age group.

England are [8.0] to finish up as tournament winners, which is itself an interesting bet. The Mail have helped by listing some of the youngsters to watch for. The likes of Freddie Sears of West Ham and Daniel Sturridge of Manchester City have already made Premier League appearances, while Moses was the big find of Palace's late surge into the Championship play-offs last season. Jack Cork, son of one-time Wimbledon hero Alan, is highly rated at Chelsea while Arsenal's Kieran Gibbs got a shirt number from Arsene Wenger during last year's Champions League campaign. So there's some potential for a punt at decent odds.

On reputation alone the Italians should be the biggest threat in England's group - but Greece are the outsiders to win it at [5.1] despite being finalists in the same competition last year. They've still got a few of that team available, and could be a danger again. In contrast the Italians, who are [2.62] favourites to finish top of Group B, have no recent record of success at the age group at all.

While there might be value in backing Greece, the one area the odds have almost certainly got right is in making Spain favourites at [3.15] to win the tournament. And that's not only based on past success, even though the Spanish have lifted the prize the last two years, and four times in the competition's six-year history. They've also got an Arsenal youngster in their line-up in Fran Merida, as well as the highly rated Atletico Madrid midfielder Ignacio Camacho.

Five things you didn't know about the UEFA Under 19 championship

1. Spain last year became the first country to retain the trophy since it evolved from the old Under 18 format in 2002

2. England's only win in either guise of the competition was in 1993 when the tournament was staged here. Gary Neville, Sol Campbell, Paul Scholes and Robbie Fowler were in the team that beat Turkey 1-0 in the final

3. The eight countries at the finals got through from 53 that entered the tournament

4. Denmark and Belgium were among those that went out in the first qualifying stage

5. England's qualifying trip to Belarus drew a crowd of 11,000 which was the highest for a pre-tournament game in the competition's history