Venue: Durban, South Africa
The last of the opening matches for each team comes from Group H and takes place on day six of the month long tournament, the 16th of June. The match, which will kick off in Durban at 16:00 local time, will see the favourites finally make their appearance and start off their campaign to dominate the 2010 World Cup.
Their opponents, Switzerland, will also be looking to go through from this group, which contains strong competition from Chile as well as rank outsiders Honduras.
The two teams haven’t played each other since back in 1994, when Spain beat Switzerland 3-0 in a previous World Cup. Whilst this was 16 years ago and so isn’t particularly relevant in terms of today’s squads, it is worth noting that the odds for that same result this time around are 8/1 at best.
With Spain the outright favourites to win the tournament and their two star strikers David Villa and Fernando Torres both in the list of favourites to win the Golden Boot, with Villa topping it, Spain should be formidable opposition to the Swiss side, who themselves are 200/1 to win the tournament and on paper less likely to make it through the group stage than 66/1 Chile.
The best odds on Spain winning this game are just 2/5 from Tote Sport, with Switzerland’s best price 10/1 from bwin or Victor Chandler.
The draw is offered at 15/4 by bet365.
With the goal scoring quality of Villa and Torres as well as the rest of the team, Spain could potentially be looked to to win by a number of goals in this game. On the correct score market the favoured result is 2-0 to the Spanish, which most bookmakers are offering 5/1 for, with 1-0 at 7/1 and 3-0 at 8/1.
To bet on just the margin of a win for Spain, Spain to win by two or more goals is just 21/20 with bet365, but to win by exactly three offers 5/1 with William Hill. Switzerland to win by two or more goals is at 22/1, again with bet365.
Prediction
This game will almost certainly go in the favourites’ direction, and there should be at least a couple of goals from the Euro 2008 winners. Spain will want to start their campaign off well and be in good shape ahead of their match against Chile, which for them will be the trickiest in the group round.
