Venue: Mangaung/Bloemfontein, South Africa
The fourth match of Group B takes place on the 17th of June and sees Nigeria take on Greece in Manguang. This fixture kicks off at 4pm local time.
The odds on these teams are pretty close for winning this match, with some bookmakers like Betfred offering the exact same price for a Nigeria win as for a Greece win. Betfred or Sportsbook.com (USA Friendly) will give you 6/4 for either one of these teams to win, or 11/5 for the draw. The best price for Nigeria is the 6/4, but you can get slightly longer odds on Greece from Victor Chandler who offer 11/5 for a Greek victory.
The reason Nigeria are slightly favoured is probably the fact they are likely to have more support and better acclimatisation with the cup being hosted in Africa, however they have had injury issues and have lost a significant player in John Obi Mikel. Greece have a history of being dark horses, coming from seemingly nowhere to win Euro 2004. This is a difficult match to call.
The fact it isn’t easy to pick a winner means conservative bets on the winning scoreline, such as 1-0 to either team or a 1-1 draw, are the shortest odds. For Nigeria, the slight favourites, to win 1-0 you can get 11/2 with most of our favourite bookmakers, including Sportsbook.com, but a Greece 1-0 win is slightly further out at 6/1.
For a 1-1 draw you can get 11/2 and for 0-0 6/1, both from Bet365. The odds get longer if you start considering a high yield of goals coming out of this game, again, not because these aren’t teams with goal scoring potential but because when a game is tough to call the bets tend to stay conservative. If you back Nigeria to win 3-1, for example, you can get 22/1. 4-0 is 80/1.
Prediction
Not an easy game by any means to predict, though Nigeria for me have just a slight edge over their rivals. 2-1 to Nigeria is my prediction, which will fetch you 9/1 with Bodog (US Friendly) or Expekt.
