World Cup - Group E and F

Group E

Plenty are pitching this as a close race for second spot, but for us, there are plenty of reasons to be with Switzerland, and they look solid favourites to finish behind what look a pretty solid and unstoppable Brazil.

We won’t go into too much detail, but with Coutinho (35 caps / 9 goals), Gabriel Jesus (16 / 9) and Neymar (85 / 54) you aren’t going to need to keep too many clean sheets to win games. Add in the likes of Thiago Silva (70 caps) and Mirando (46 caps), plus a couple of exceptional defensive midfielders to protect them, and you have the makings of a very good squad indeed. Little wonder they are 2/5 to win the group and we aren’t planning to take them on.

Gabriel Jesus is the interesting man for us here. Neymar has astonishing scoring rate for Brazil -54 in 84 starts despite still being just 26 – a record which means just Pele, Ronaldo and Romario have scored more. That’s led to him being priced at just 5/4 to end the tournament as the leading scorer for his country. With some doubts about his fitness following a broken foot though, I’d rather look at Garbriel Jesus, who has scored nine in 16 for his country, and an impressive 7 in 10 in qualifying. He’s 3/1 to finish as Top Brazilian scorer and 20/1 to be top tournament scorer.

Ranked 6th by FIFA, the Swiss probably aren’t as good as that ranking suggests – they lack a recognised goalscorer for a start off – but an Elo ranking of 14th is probably nearer the truth, and it’s a good deal higher than the 23rd Serbia are rated or the 27th of Costa Rica. Switzerland look well adjusted for tournament play, and will look to grind results out – don’t be surprised to see them beat Costa Rica 1-0 for instance. Of their last 16 competitive wins, 12 have come “to nil” and they have conceded no more than one goal in 19 of their last 26 games. If the ineffectual Haris Seferovic continues to lead the line, they may well continue that sort of trend in winning matches.

In this regard, we’ll take a punt on a top Swiss goalscorer, because the bookies don’t dislike Seferovic as much as we do. His 11 goals in 50 starts simply isn’t good enough. Instead we'll try Xherdan Shaqiri. The Ex-Bayern and Inter man will be keen for a big World Cup to ensure he can escape playing Championship football with Stoke in 2018/19 and has 20 goals for his county in 69 appearances. In a team who get so few goals, a couple would surely win this, and he’s a certain starter for the Swiss.

With Serbia prone to lapses of concentration in defence, they look more vulnerable to Costa Rica, and that could be crucial if Brazil win all three games in the group – something they look to have a decent chance of achieving. Switzerland are a small bet to qualify for the Last 16 at 6/5 as a result.

Since the last World Cup, 59% of Serbia’s matches have ended with Both Teams Scoring (an average price of 4/6) which is notable against an average across all teams who have qualified of 39.5% (average price 6/4). There could be angles in that, particularly against Brazil, where we may well see a high scoring game at both ends. Serbia have scored in 16 of their 17 competitive matches over the past four years

Costa Rica look light on goals, and Arsenal man Joel Campbell and Marco Urena don’t seem to offer too much threat. Their success could depend on Keylor Navas performing heroics once again between the sticks and we don’t see a great future for them in this competition.

Group E Bets

1pt Xherdan Shaqiri to be top Switzerland Scorer at 4/1 (General)

1pt Gabriel Jesus Top Brazil Scorer at 3/1 (Betfair)

1pt Gabriel Jesus Top Scorer at 20/1 (UniBet)

1pt Switzerland to qualify from Group E at 6/5 (SkyBet)

Group F

Like Group E, we have a very solid group favourite. Germany scored an impressive 43 goals in qualifying – equally the record – in just 10 matches, and conceded just four. They have strength throughout the squad – 21 different players scored in that campaign, while they also have some real individual quality. The emergence of Timo Werner is exciting with seven goals in 13 starts, with they also have Joshua Kimmich and Thomas Muller – a man with 38 goals for his country already. Winners of the Confederation Cup was also useful experience given it was hosted here in Russia. Finishing Group Winners would see them likely meet Switzerland, Serbia or Costa Rica, before facing Group H Winners (one of Colombia, Poland, Serbia or Japan) or England. They look great to reach the semi-finals at least.

Mexico are second favourites in the group, which makes solid sense, but coming out of Central American qualifying, I'd have wanted to see much stronger data to convince me they could challenge for the group win. They have won just 20 of their 40 competitive matches since the last World Cup (German have won 24/31 for comparison) and scored just 68 in that period, conceeding 40. An average scoreline of 1.7 v 1.0.

Germany again by comparison have scored 86 and leaked 21 - and average result of 2.78 v 0.67.

Mexico are taken to just about come out ahead of Sweden in this group. That would surely see them face Brazil in the last 16, and as such BetFred's 9/4 for them to exit in the Last 16 looks pretty much indeed. Given they are 6/5 to qualify from the group, that would imply that they would go off about 4/9 to fail to qualify against Brazil in the second round. I would expect Brazil to be close to 1/7 in that market personally.

Add in that Mexico have gone out at the last 16 round in each of their last six appearances at the finals, you have an interesting angle.

Hirving Lazano catches our eye from a player perspective - he's been on-fire for PSV this season, and was top-scorer in qualifying (albeit with four). He has seven goals in 27 starts now, which whiel poor compared to 49 from 101 from Javier Hernandez, these men are at different points in their careers, and Hernandez only netter three in 11 en route to the finals.

We're not convinced by Sweden. They are probably no worse now without Ibrahimovic (the stats suggest they are performing about the same levels a couple of years in), but they don't have a lot of goals in them now (17 of their 26 in qualifying came against Luxembourg and Belarus).

Korea are comfortably the worst side in the group, although their FIFA ranking of 61st is probably a touch harsh. They were a full seven points behind Iran in qualifying, and scored just 11 goals in 10 qualifying games in that group against such opposition as Syria, Uzbekistan and Qatar. They are short of fire power, with only Heung-Min Son likely to really threaten. William Hills 8/11 on them scoring under 2.5 goals looks a gift here.

Group F Bets

4.5pts Germany to win Group F at 4/9 (General)

2pts Germany to win the World Cup at 5/1 (Sky Bet Money back if you lose)

1pt Hirving Lazano to be top Mexico Scorer at 6/1 (Boyles)

2pts Mexico to be eliminated at the Last 16 stage at 9/4 (Bet Fred)

3.3pts Korea to score Under 2.5 Group Goals (Sky Bet)

#Football