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Football Picks and Handicapping Tips

While football (called soccer by some in the US) is indeed the world’s most popular sport, it is safe to say that there’s a good number of bettors (sometimes even professional bettors indeed) who do not know or care about the sport much. What they do care about is getting their bets right and making money off major international football events like the World Cup, the Confederations Cup or the European Championships. Football-wise, there is indeed something going on at all times and most sharps simply cannot bear to miss out on all the great action and money-making potential.

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Here are a few tips for bettors who do not really care about or follow football and who are just interested in placing a few good bets on the games.

The first rule would be to find a handicapper (online or otherwise) who can offer bettors great picks. These picks can then be used as a starting point for reverse handicapping and eventually for placing the bets themselves. Those too lazy to delve deeper into the handicapping side of things can use good picks to bet straight away, but it’s always better to just use them as a starting point and to actually understand what’s going on behind the scenes.

Qualifiers are always great handicapping opportunities for bettors. They offer a great insight into what teams are really capable of. Teams tend to use their best lineups (at least for the games which truly have a stake), and the action itself is the closest to how a given team will perform in a tournament. One always has to keep an eye out for changes between qualifiers and actual tournament lineups.

Recent friendly games also offer a valuable glance into the form of a certain squad, although these need to be treated with caution, as they’re not nearly as serious as the above said qualifiers.

Scrutinize past data. Many handicappers take a look at the results obtained by a team in past editions of the same tournament, and they’re obviously holding these past results relevant in their handicapping. Relevancy is a bit tricky in this case though. The results need to be corroborated with the actual makeup of the roster which can indeed change quite a bit from one tournament to another. Also, the time elapsed between the two tournament editions can have a major impact on the performance of teams which stick to the same roster.

Coaching is obviously always a big part of the equation. Coaching changes are frequent in football and they often involve a lot of drama, which brings us to another major handicapping factor: drama.

In football, drama can reach above and beyond coaching scandals, as illustrated by the last edition of the World Cup, and drama can have a huge impact on the way a team will handle itself.
Last but not least: take a peek at the average expectation associated with your analyzed teams. Before a major event, there is no shortage of predictions, and some of the people making those predictions do in fact know what they’re talking about.