World Cup Betting: Group H

World Cup Betting / Tobias Gourlay / 08 May 2010 / Leave a comment Free £25 Bet

Marcelo Bielsa can call on Humberto Suazo to pacify the Swiss.

In his final group preview, Tobias Gourlay expects Switzerland to be neutralized by a powerful Chile attack.

Recommended Bets: Back Chile at [6.4] to be Group Winner; lay Switzerland at [2.5] To Qualify

Spain, the European champions, are favourites to win the World Cup this year. This time last year it was thought they might be invincible. At the 2009 Confederations Cup, however, a defeat to the USA, which (usefully?) exposed a specific vulnerability to crossfield passing, and a narrower-than-expected victory over Iraq, which showed they might not always be able to navigate around parked buses, helped the rest of the world suppress such thoughts.

Eight victories in eight games since then suggest Vicente del Bosque's men were not shaken by events in South Africa 12 months ago. If Fernando Torres and Andres Iniesta can get up to speed quickly after injury-hit club seasons, they will have the pace and direction to avoid parked buses and will win Group H, perhaps as impressively as they did the Group H of Germany 2006. Their consistency makes them hard to oppose, even when there's next to nothing to lose with them at [1.07] to qualify.

Chile, whose opening game is against Honduras, the outsiders who might have just lost Genoa striker David Suazo to injury, are favourites to join the Spanish in the second round, although they've never got that far in any World Cup on foreign soil. Like Paraguay, they have an Argentinean coach. Marcelo Bielsa helped them qualify impressively, just a point behind Brazil, and inspired the best in Humberto Suazo. El Chupete ('the Dummy') was the leading scorer in CONMEBOL qualifying and has made a small splash in Spain with Real Zaragoza of late.

Bielsa sees attacking football as the 'simplest way to victory and success' and his team will be easier on the eye than, say, Switzerland, who have a different manager, Ottmar Hitzfeld, but still rely on Alexander Frei and are no more forward-looking than when they exited Germany '06 without conceding a single goal. They overcame an embarrassing defeat to Luxembourg and qualified from a fairly easy group just ahead of Greece. A recent home defeat to Uruguay does not inspire confidence and the suggested strategy for this group is to focus on Chile, who can plausibly win both of their games before playing Spain last and with little at stake. You can cover a punt on Chile to win the group (which could be laid off before the game with Spain) with a safer bet on them to qualify.

If David Suazo is fit for Honduras, he will bring more big-league experience to a team already containing Wigan's Maynor Figueroa at full-back and Tottenham Hotspur's Wilson Palacios in midfield. At [5.7] to qualify, the Central Americans are easily preferred to Switzerland at [2.5].

Tags: Alexander Frei, Andres Iniesta, Chile, David Suazo, Fernando Torres, Honduras, Humberto Suazo, Marcelo Bielsa, Ottmar Hitzfeld, Spain, Switzerland, Tobias Gourlay, Vicente del Bosque, World Cup Betting, World Cup Tips