Venue: Rustenburg, South Africa
On the 15th of June, day five of this year’s World Cup Finals tournament, Rustenberg plays host to the second match in Group F, where absolute outsiders New Zealand take on low ranking European side Slovakia. Kicking off at 13:30 local time, they will be playing in the hottest part of the day.
Within a group that also contains Italy and Paraguay, progressing past the first round will be a huge achievement for either one of these teams if they manage to get the results to be any more than just teams who were “happy to take part”.
New Zealand, who have only been in the World Cup once before in 1982, and who then exited during the group stage, have the lowest odds of anybody in the competition to lift the trophy, with expekt.com offering as much as 3000/1 on this eventuality and most others around the 2000/1 mark.
Slovakia, whilst having slightly higher expectations than this, are the lowest rated European team in terms of odds to win, alongside Slovenia. The best odds for them to win are 300/1 from bwin. Yes, ten times better than New Zealand, so while neither team is looked at as serious contenders, in this game Slovakia should have the upper hand.
This is indeed shown in the odds for the winner of this game, with the best odds on Slovakia 8/15 from Sky Bet. The best odds available at the time of writing for a New Zealand win are 8/1 from Victor Chandler.
The draw is offered at around 3/1 from most bookmakers, so a Slovakia win is definitely the bookies’ most expected outcome.
The chances of New Zealand keeping a clean sheet in light of this are 5/1 from William Hill, but for Slovakia to do the same are just 8/13.
Correct scoreline betting will offer Slovakia winning 1-0 or 2-0 both for around 5/1, with the odds of New Zealand making it 2-0 for themselves 40/1 with Tote Sport or William Hill. A 0-0 draw is seen as being as unlikely as Slovakia winning 3-0, with 10/1 available on both of these outcomes.
Prediction
New Zealand really have very little chance of doing anything in the World Cup, but Slovakia may well be hoping to be in with a chance to contend for second place in the group, in which case they will definitely need to take away three points from this match and do so with as many goals as possible.
For this reason, the prediction is a 3-0 win for Slovakia.
