Germany Women v Italy Women
Germany struggled to break down a resilient Sweden side in the opening rounds, and might even have lost the match when the Swedes were guilty of missing a wonderful chance late on. They know therefore that they can afford no similar struggles in front of goal against Italy. The bookies aren’t expecting any problems of course – they make the World Number 2s around 1/7 to win the match, and Italy are available at 22/1 following their opening round defeat to Russia.
Italy are ranked 18th in the FIFA rankings, so we looked at how Germany fare when meeting sides ranked 8th-28th in the world (10 places either side of Italy). Of the 19 matches which meet that criteria over the past three campaigns, Germany have a 16-2-1 record, scoring an average of 2.6 goals, for 0.9 against, although that gets much better if removing sides who are just inside the top 10 – given Sweden beat Germany 4-2 a couple of years ago which skews the stats noticeably.
Looking at Italy’s record against really top rate sides delivers a small sample – they don’t typically put themselves in harms way. Of the six matches they’ve played against the world’s Top 6 (USA, Germany, England, France, Australia and Canada) they have lost five and drawn once, scoring 4 goals and conceding 13.
A par score in this one would probably be something like a 2-0 or 3-0, but to get the bigger price we are going to factor in that Germany often slip up at the back – in the 13 matches we looked at, their opponents scored in seven of them. With that in mind, the 2-1 and 3-1 could be the best angle – a small bet on each.
0.5pts Germany to win 2-1 at 11/1 with Bet365
0.5pts Germany to win 3-1 at 12/1 with Bet365