Euro 2012 Group C betting

Group C is one of the strongest groups in tournament and the Republic of Ireland’s reward for their play-off win over Estonia, is to be grouped with Spain, Italy and Croatia. Of course two of the sides instantly stand out, with Spain the current world and European champions and a resurgent Italy, who were World Cup winners as recent as 2006. This makes it very hard to see Ireland or Croatia qualifying from the group, but stranger things have happened. Croatia aren’t quite the force they were a couple of years ago and struggled to qualify. They eventually finished second behind Greece in a poor group but did beat Turkey in the play-offs. It looks then, as though Spain will take top spot, leaving a three way battle for the runner-up spot.

Euro 2012 Group C odds

As you would expect, Spain are very short odds to win the group, and even short to qualify, with 1.59 available to go through top. The lack of value here means looking at a straight forecast of Spain and Italy as the top 2 is a little better with odds of 2.18.  Italy are the second favourites to qualify and win the group, but with winning the group looking difficult, it would be more sensible to look at qualification. There is some pretty good value in the Azzurri to qualify at 1.52, especially considering their good record in qualifying. It is worth remembering that they went out at the first stage of the World Cup 2 years ago, but they have had a change of manager since then. Croatia are the third side in the group and are a bit longer odds than Italy, although shorter than Ireland. They famously qualified for the 2008 finals, ahead of England, but failed to qualify for the World Cup in 2010, that time losing out to England.  So they do have some recent history of getting to tournaments, but odds of 2.77 to qualify show they’ve got a difficult task to beat Italy or Spain to a top 2 spot.

The final team in the group is the Republic of Ireland, and they’re the Group C best bet. This might sound strange when they are as long as 4.8 to qualify, but this means there is good value in the bet. They are the best bet, as recently Giovanni Trapattoni has got them playing very well, they are solid defensively and have players capable of getting a goal. The Republic of Ireland actually went on an 11 match unbeaten run in 2011, which included a 2-0 win over Italy. They also have an inform Robbie Keane, who has been playing regularly with L.A Galaxy and has netted 7 goals in qualifying. This does of course mean that Italy would have to slip up in qualification, but they did finish bottom of their group at World Cup 2010.