Venue: Cape Town, South Africa
On the 18th of June England are back for their second Group C match, taking on African outsiders Algeria. The match will take place in Cape Town and will start at 20:30 local time.
England, as one of the favourites to win the World Cup, are by far the favourites to win this match over Algeria who are one of the competition’s outsiders. Betfred are offering 1/4 on an England win, so there isn’t a lot of money to be made just by predicting this eventuality.
If you think Algeria could upset England here, the odds are obviously a lot longer on an Algerian win, at 11/1 with Expekt. The draw is also quite long at 5/1.
To get any real return with an England win, you are going to need to look at a more precise prediction, so we have looked at the correct score and first goal scorer markets as well.
1-0, 2-0 and 3-0 to England are the most popular bets on the correct score market. For 1-0 and 2-0 you can get 5/1 from Betfred, going out to 7/1 for 3-0. If you think Algeria might slip a goal in but England will still take the points, you can get 10/1 for 2-1 and the same for 3-1, both best prices from William Hill.
For a bigger win for England, Bet365 will give you 10/1 for 4-0 and 20/1 for 5-0.
Wayne Rooney is just 3/1 to score the first goal with William Hill, with Jermain Defoe the second favourite at 10/3. Lennon and Lampard are both at 5/1, with Crouch at 6/1. Whilst Crouch does fire in the goals for England, the fact that he is often used as a substitution means it is less likely he will get the first goal in a game where England will be hoping to win by a reasonable margin.
In other bets, you can take 16/1 for Rooney to get a hat trick with William Hill, which goes out to 25/1 for Crouch to do the same. To score two or more goals, Rooney’s price is only 3/1.
Prediction
This game really should go England’s way, and the bookmakers are putting a lot of expectation on Rooney with the short odds on him being the first goal scorer and scoring multiple goals. For this reason, the prediction in 3-0 to England.
