SOCCER World Cup - Brazil vs. Croatia
***FREE PREMIUM PLAY***
In this first game of the tournament, I believe that the host Brazil is a bit overvalued as we should be dealing w/ AH line of -1 or -1.25 goals and not this current -1.5 spread line. Note that I think Brazil is the cut clear favorite to win it all, as their amazing depth will be a key factor for them later, let alone the fact that they are playing at home. However, Croatia will be a tough matchup for them…
Under NT’s coach Scolari, Brazil is playing w/ a double pivot on the center of the midfield – it looks like Paulinho and Luiz Gustavo will start in here, while Oscar will play @ traditional playmaker position in from of them. Oscar is clearly out of form as he is coming from a subpar second half of season for Chelsea, and both Paulinho and Gustavo don’t have the proper technical ability to create open-plays for the team. I’ve watched their “friendly” game against Serbia, and the Brazilians had some tremendous problems to create chances to score a goal! Eventually they won the game w/ a goal from Fred...
I’ve decided to talk a bit of Brazil’s center midfield potential problems, because I really think that Croatia’s midfield unit can outplay them today or at least, create some serious problems. Luka Modric, Ivan Rakitic and Mateo Kovacic are all coming from tremendous individual seasons serving their clubs, and all of them have a superior technical ability.
Obviously, we can expect Brazil to make an incredible pressure from the start, but the superior ability of the Croatians to retain the ball will make the difference in here in my opinion as those 3 players are really great in passing the ball between them. Croatia’s best striker Mandzukic is suspended and will miss the game and most likely, Ivica Olic will play on the front – that bodes well for Croatia as they’ll try to score in quick counter moves, and Olic is more mobile when compared to Mandzukic.
I’m not saying that Croatia will win the game because Brazil has some supreme individual talent that can solve the game in any instant, but I expect them to have some problems in here due to Croatia’s style of play, therefore, I’m playing Croatia AH (+1.5) as my Single Dime Play!
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on Croatia AH (+1.5) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
No comments:
Post a Comment