World Cup 2018: Belgium vs England
Belgium play England in the 3rd place play-off, both teams are out of the tournament proper - although 3rd place is a small incentive, this can be almost viewed a friendly game. Much like the same match up in the last game of the Group Stages.
So how would you price this in comparison to the original group game opening price? How would you price it in comparison to the closing price of the original group game?
There is quite a difference now in the pricing of both games.
For the opening price for the original Group game it may have been expected to be more of a competitive fixture, at least it might have been important to finish 1st or 2nd in the group. There are the normal concerns of a dead rubber especially based on the make up of the group - a big gap between the top 2 and bottom 2 teams, coupled with the fact that the top 2 teams play last. But when the opening price was conceived nobody could have predicted how things would turn out with Germany dropping out of the losers quarter of the draw. So I really do believe that this would be priced up in a pretty standard way. Perhaps with a draw result a tad on the short side because of the potential dead rubber element of it.
Even the closing prices of the original Group game could be perceived as a good guide for the play-off. The Group game ended up for all intents and purposes a friendly match. I don't believe that both teams will rest their best 11 this time around, but still, there is always a feel of a friendly about the 3rd/4th place play off after the real prize has slipped by both teams.
If you are to use either England's opening price, or England's closing price as a guide to this second match versus Belgium then you would imagine there is value on them at 3.3 now. See table below comparing all prices. (odds data taken from OddsPortal)
Belgium were favourite initially for the opening match. This is consistent. Belgium were rated higher on the Outright market about 11/1 while England were about 17/1 pre tournament. But they are even shorter priced favourites now for the play off match.
There is reason to reassess both teams as they both have put in some performances in the mean time. Most notable is Belgium's victory versus Brazil (although it has to be said that they were largely outplayed for long periods of the match, and Brazil created enough chances to beat them comfortably). The Japan game was bad (they went 2 down to one of the pre tournament long shots) and good (they came back). On England's side its been much more consistent with victories over Columbia and Sweden (although they needed penalties vs Colombia). I think its fair to say that they deservedly won both games though as they were a small bit unlucky to concede to Colombia in the last minute which forced extra time and ultimately penalties. Then both teams were dumped in the semi, England at the hands of Croatia and Belgium at the hands of France. England probably put up a stronger fight in their semi final, but against a team regarded as weaker than France.
It should also be mentioned that Belgium won that game versus England, but they both fielded weak teams.
Putting it all together I do not see over-whelming evidence that says we need to re-assess Belgium to that extent that they are much shorter. Should a few recent results skew the odds that much anyway. 2 years worth of qualifying data and friendly matches, as well as player data from hundreds of club matches would have been built into the model which rated Belgium 2.5 and England 2.87. But now because Belgium beat Brazil in a one off game that they were dominated in, our opinion has changed to 2.2 and 3.3.
I have compared the motivations for each match, and when the Group game was priced up more as a competitive game (opening price) and then as a friendly game (closing price), both guide us towards England as value at 3.3. No two games can have the same motivation factor though, so perhaps the incentive for 3rd will bring out a little more in the Belgians, and for sure they probably have a little more.
I also wonder will the Golden Boot story play its role in this. For sure Lukaku is heavily motivated to score a hat full. He trails Kane by 2 goals which looks like a huge deficit when you look at it in terms of the market trend (below). You can see that Kane is over 90% certainty to pick up the accolade.
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| World Cup 2018: Top Scorer Betfair price trend by date |
The graph shows Neymar initially favourite, just about but quickly over taken with Ronaldo's early hat trick. Kane soon got into gear too though and has been strong favourite since. There was a small interest in Mbappe in the market for a short time - he indeed could still be an outside chance as he also has a game to go.
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