The real Winners and Losers

So with the group stages over and a break from football for one day this is a good day to reflect on the winners and losers in the competition so far. The biggest winners have been Costa Rica and Algeria who unexpectedly qualified for the round of 16 - with Costa Rica making it through some people's group of death.  Also Mexico and Netherlands have turned some heads. Costa Rica's pretournament odds of 2000/1 have been slashed to 50/1 after impressing against Italy and Uruguay in the two biggest upsets of the tournament so far.  This puts them ahead of USA, Greece, Switzerland and Nigeria in the betting stakes - all of who were shorter odds than them before the tournament. Netherlands also made huge gains on their 35/1 pre tournament tag which ranked them only 12th favourite.  You could have got 500/1 for them to beat Spain 5-1 and they haven't looked back since.  They have leaped ahead of the opposition and are now just behind the big three of Brazil, Argentina and Germany in the odds markets.  They will meet Mexico in the next round who also proved in the group stages that their 200/1 pre tournament odds were well wide of the mark with a draw with Brazil and a comprehensive win against Croatia. The biggest losers were Spain who were fancied as one of the favourites before a ball was kicked.  England, Italy and Portugal will all be disappointed that they are taking the plane home early too. Of the 16 remaining countries Uruguay will look forward to the rest of the competition with less optimism than any of the other teams.  Suarez showed them up as a one man team when they failed to beat Costa Rica in his absence.  He then returned to take the English defense apart single handedly.  His departure from the tournament has hit Uruguay's chances very hard.  Even though they made it out of my group of death their odds have now lengthened from 28/1 to 40/1.  They are the only team that are now less fancied to win the tournament than they were compard to their pre-tournament odds. Table lists the pre-tournament odds and latest odds for all countries.  They are ranked from biggest gain to biggest loss.

Country Pre-Trounament Odds Latest Odds Costa Rica 2000/1 50/1 Algeria 2000/1 200/1 Mexico 200/1 33/1 Netherlands 35/1 15/2 Greece 300/1 100/1 France 25/1 17/2 United States 200/1 80/1 Colombia 33/1 20/1 Chile 40/1 25/1 Nigeria 300/1 200/1 Germany 13/2 4/1 Switzerland 125/1 100/1 Belgium 20/1 20/1 Argentina 4/1 4/1 Brazil 3/1 3/1 Uruguay 28/1 40/1 Honduras 3000/1 - Iran 1500/1 - Australia 1000/1 - Cameroon 500/1 - South Korea 400/1 - Ecuador 200/1 - Ghana 200/1 - Bosnia and Herzegovina 175/1 - Japan 150/1 - Croatia 150/1 - Ivory Coast 125/1 - Russia 100/1 - England 28/1 - Portugal 28/1 - Italy 25/1 - Spain 13/2 -