Venue: Tshwane/Pretoria, South Africa
The second match in Group D, one of the toughest groups in this year’s World Cup Finals tournament, will take place in Pretoria on the 13th of June at 16:00 local time.
In a group that also features seeded team Germany and top Asia/Oceania side Australia, these teams, who both had strong qualifying campaigns, will need to excel to make it through to the knockout rounds.
This game should be interesting for the neutral, with the teams varying so much in style and background but with similar expectations on them going into the tournament.
As the first World Cup ever to take place on African soil, the climate and support in South Africa may be advantageous to Ghana. Among the African teams in the competition they are not quite as well fancied as the Ivory Coast, however they are the second favourite African side with the bookmakers, at 4/1 to be the top finishing African team (Ivory Coast are evens) and 66/1 to win the competition outright.
Serbia are also 66/1 for winning the cup, so the teams are, on paper, very evenly matched.
The odds for the match itself reflect this, with Ghana at around 2/1 and Serbia varying on either side from 7/5 to 5/4 – this is one that everybody is very reluctant to call.
The odds for the draw are around 11/5.
The scoreline odds have Serbia at 5/1 to win 1-0, with the same scoreline for Ghana at 13/2. Higher scoring wins show Serbia as favourites, with 2-0 being 20/1 for Serbia and 40/1 for Ghana.
Bets on the team to score first are very close indeed but again with a leaning towards Serbia – bodog.com offer 20/21 on Serbia to net the first goal and 5/4 on Ghana.
Even the winning margin bets are close – Serbia to win by two or more goals is 4/1 with bet365, whereas for Ghana to do the same is 6/1.
Prediction
With both teams looking to make it out of this difficult group, they will theoretically both be playing for a win, so despite how evenly matched they are, it is difficult to see either being satisfied with a draw. Serbia seem to have the slight edge with the bookmakers, even considering Ghana’s perceived African advantage, however I am inclined to go with Michael Essien and his team for the win. The prediction for this game is therefore 2-1 to Ghana. We have also listed more predictions for Group D in World Cup.
