Wednesday, 20 July 2011

Copa America - Semi Final (Paraguay v Venezula)


The half – time draw once again came in (as Sportingbet’s Mark O’Haire has said, for the 16th time in the tournament) as Uruguay had to wait before finding a way past Peru in the first semi – final of the Copa America and we’ll do the same tonight to a 1/3rd of the Stake as these two teams are tightly matched as well.

The best example of this is actually the rather galling 3-3 draw between these two when an incredible turn of events in Salta saw Venezuela appear to be all but beaten, but a heroic comeback saw La Vinotinto salvage a 3-3 draw thanks to goals from Miku and Perozo.

Paraguay have extremely strong defensive qualities which were primarily shown in their quarter final win over Brazil, which is probably the only reason why they’re favourites especially at odds against or evens.

The Brazil striker Neymar challenges Paraguay's Dario Veron While the “win” against Brazil was well deserved and took no amount of nerve (while Brazil can moan at the LA Plata pitch all they want at least Paraguay scored twice) it did have it’s fair shore of fortune and a better game from Neymar may well see Brazil here.

The likes of Nelson Valdez and Lucas Barrios, coupled with the fact that Paraguay are the bigger “footballing” nation of the two, probably carries a lot of their market price, along with the fact that it was Brazil who they eliminated and while one can see them being favourites, it’s hard to get too enthused about them at 11/10 or evens.

Venezula’s progress to the last 4 has been impressive. They were able to beat Chile and Ecuador, and they forced a dramatic draw against Paraguay, along with a 0-0 stalemate with Brazil. The Venezuelans know how to score against Paraguay, and it’s surprising that is that no one is taking them seriously, along with the fact that Venezuela has nothing to lose, but the only favourite to win a Copa match recently (or even progress in most cases) and they’re a seriously tempting bet at 11/4 or +0.5 on the Asian H’cap. But that said, we don’t want to overcomplicate things with the small matter of the first test between England and India coming up so we’ll stick with yet another half – time draw between the two.

Advice

1 pt HT Draw (11/10 Stan James) 

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