Hey, let’s try updating the blog for two days in a row!
When it comes to Big Football Tournament betting, the top scorer market is where the proper princely sums are sitting. Anyone who’d backed Milan Baros (shoddy form for Liverpool, the more prolific half of a goal-happy strike duo alongside Jan Koller for the Czech Republic) in Euro 2004 probably still remembers the warm glow of collecting that 45/1 windfall.
When it comes to the 2014 World Cup In Association With Several Soulless Megacorporations, the short odds belong to the usual suspects: Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo et al.
But, what about the value bets? The ones you could easily back on a sports exchange like Betfair, and then happily lay off following a productive group stage for a quick profit? Clinical form at club level is no real indicator of international quality – Lionel Messi’s strike rate for Argentina is barely in the same postcode as his goals-per-game figures at Barcelona.
What someone needs to do is take a list of all potential tournament goalscorers – say, ones priced at 100/1 or less – and knock up a table of goals-per-game ratios for the lot. That way, the value bets are a bit clearer. Surely. Oh, if only some clever, patient and probably quite sexy amateur statisticians had done just that?
Well, they haven’t. But we have:
So, easy. Plonk a pony on Drogba, sit back and await your definite haul of eighty times whatever a pony is. We never paid attention during repeats of Minder. As we said, easy.
“OKAY! I NOW KNOW WHO WILL DEFINITELY BE TOP SCORER AT THE WORLD CUP. I’VE PUT MY NEXT MORTGAGE PAYMENT ON ASAMOAH GYAN, HOW CAN I WHILE THE TIME UNTIL I COLLECT MY WINNINGS?”
Erk. The BrokenTV Brazil 2014 World Cup Prediction League is a handy thing to while away that wait for the baliffs. Predict the outcomes of each match, along with a few important other categories (Who will win the tournament? Who will be top goalscorer? What will be the first letter of the first word Adrian Chiles says at the very beginning of the opening match coverage?). All against other people from around the country. Or the three people on Twitter who kind of take pity on the amount of time it took to put this all together.
The entry fee is just £2, with all collected moneys going to the Flintshire Deaf Childrens Society. At the end of the tournament, the winner will receive a super-secret football-related goody bag (the contents of which are yet to be disclosed, but the value of which will far exceed that £2 stipend). Simply pledge your £2 and either include your email address on the JustGiving comment page (or if you prefer, email me at brokentvworldcup@gmail.com), and I’ll send out a prediction form to be filled in. Once returned, points will start being totted up right from the first match, and information updated at http://brokentvpredictionleague.tumblr.com/ daily.
The rules: simple. Predict the score of each match. Five points for a correct score, two points for a correct outcome. Predict all of the group matches from the start, and lists of the knockout matches to be sent when the line-up is decided.
So: let’s go: http://www.justgiving.com/brokentv
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