Test Of Blue

It seems the Socceroos are the darling underdogs at the moment, getting a lot of credit for their attacking style and lots of love in the press for Guru Guus. Tonight they were chosen by 2 outta 3 Fox Soccer commentators for a win against Italy tomorrow (unfortunately, not the pragmatic Bobby McMahon), and more surprisingly, I saw them chosen by Adult Swim in one of their bumps tonight!

Now, this is more wishful thinking than bookies favourite. In fact, William Hill has Australia at 8-1 for a win tomorrow in regulation time, with 2-0 to Italy the lowest odds.

These were the odds from William Hill 5 December, just after the prelim draw in 2003.
5-1 Brazil
6-1 France, Italy
7-1 Argentina, Germany
8-1 England
9-1 The Netherlands, Spain
20-1 Portugal
25-1 Czech Rep
50-1 Paraguay
66-1 Cameroon, Mexico, USA

Here's the current odds as of Monday AM...

3.75:1 Brazil
4.33:1 Argentina
6.5:1 Germany, England
8.5:1 Italy
81:1 Australia

Frankly, England are hopelessly overvalued. They looked truly awful today, with even the normally reliable Lampard having a shocker. But they do have the advantage of facing the Portugal B-side after their bloodbath against the Dutch. This next Portugal game is a poorer event without the sublime skills of Deco.

Speaking of shafted, I found out that Brett Emerton's second yellow against Croatia, which suspends one of our best players on tournament form from the Italy game, was due to a innocuous (not innocuous enough though) handball stopping a Simunic through-pass. And at that time, Simunic was on 2 yellow-cards, thanks to referee Graham Poll's disasterous oversight amongst a litany of errors, especially when you consider that Tomas handballed twice in the box, and didn't get a card for either. Australia received only 2 yellows that game, both to Brett–that's a combined team total less than Simunic!

That ain't right. So here's to an upset Monday! Whoever does get through, faces the easier side of the quarter-final draw too.

technorati tags:WorldCup, Socceroos, Italy, Soccer

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