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, Arg...