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Boring but profitable? That’ll be the Belgians!

By Matt | February 13, 2009

They’re third in a qualifying group that Spain should win easily, and they recently drew with minnows Luxembourg, but I think Belgium could be a cheeky outside bet for World Cup 2010.

Why? After all, they haven’t a cat in hell’s chance of winning it. But that’s not the point. They’re still a decent tip for making some money.

Point 1: Belgium are 500/1 for a reason
Paddy Power currently has the Red Devils at odds of 500/1 in their World Cup 2010 betting (and, it should be said, I’ve backed them each-way at that price).

There’s a reason for those odds.

Principally, Belgium are third in a qualifying group that includes European Champions Spain (three words that I never thought I’d type two days in a row) and losing semi-finalists Turkey.

Only one team qualifies for South Africa 2010 automatically; the other has to go through a nail-biting play-off.

As the bookies probably expected, Spain are in pole position, with the Turks in second place.

Furthermore, Belgium haven’t distinguished themselves in international football for donkeys years. They had their last big chance at Euro 2000, which they co-hosted, and they were rubbish. The bookies probably struggle to lay them at any price – and 500/1 reflects that.

(Note that both Bet365 and BlueSquare have the Belgians as short as 150/1 – so have presumably got a bit of liability if the Red Devils do make it to Johannesburg).

Point 2: the future looks rosy for the Red Devils
Should Belgium actually be 150/1 – or shorter? Well, we can assume they’re not going to win their group, but a play-off should be achievable.

They’ve yet to play Turkey at home and were unlucky to come away with a 1-1 draw away – Turkey only equalising with an injury-time penalty. They also put up a pretty good performance against Spain, by all accounts – although they can lose home and away to the Spaniards and still qualify for the World Cup.

Everyone else in their group is beatable – and they could have the players to do it.

Sure, the Belgians have had some slip-ups in friendlies – but, as England fans have long known, friendlies are basically meaningless. You can try new things, ditch them, rest your Man U players in case you get shouted at, and so on. So I’m not reading too much into them.

What I do like is what other people – especially Belgians themselves – are saying about the current crop of Belgian players, and those coming through the ranks.

Chief among these is Marouane Fellaini, who has impressed at Everton this season. Manchester City fans will also be familiar with Vincent Kompany and Daniel van Buyten. Steven Defour is highly rated and being watched by a number of Premier League clubs.

All these players have been called “the new Enzo Scifo” at some point (well, perhaps not van Buyten. But Google the phrase and you’ll see the rest!). As have most of a new crop of Belgian youngsters – chief among whom is Eden Hazard, a seventeen-year-old currently at Lille in the French Ligue 1 with, again, a host of top Premier League clubs watching him.

A commenter on FourFourTwo’s blog also mentioned, “Funso Ojo, Vadis Odjidja Ofoe, Axel Witsel, Geoffrey Mujangi-Bia, Quentin Pottiez, Paul-José Mpoku, Maxime Lestienne [and] Bruno Baras” as well as Hazard.

We probably won’t hear of most of them again – but it’s encouraging that the Belgians themselves see things positively.

The international team won comfortably on Wednesday night, beating Slovenia 2-0 at home in a friendly. Daniel van Buyten scored both goals.

If the fans’ confidence is well-founded then the Red Devils could soon be 150/1 across the board – and if they qualify for the World Cup then their betting odds will shrink considerably.

Get through the group stages and they’ll be no longer than 50/1 – even if they still don’t have a chance of winning.

Point 3: making arbing interesting
Does any of this make arbing more interesting? After all, I recently said it was as exciting as a 90-day savings account – and it usually is.
But when you can back a team that’s 500/1 and you expect the price to get shorter, it’s a bit more interesting.

What is arbing?
Arbing – or “arbitrage”, for those who are unfamiliar with the concept – is the simple act of backing a team at one price and laying them at another.

The idea is that you back them at a bigger price than you lay them so that, whatever the result, you’re “hedged”.

You lose the bet you’ve laid and so have to pay out – but the amount you win is bigger, so it’s guaranteed profit all the way.

Let’s take a simple example: team A – we’ll call them Belgium – are odds of 500/1 to win the FIFA World Cup. You back them at £10 to win. If they win the tournament outright, you’re £5,000 in profit; if they don’t, you’re down a tenner.

However, by the time the tournament kicks off they’re down to 100/1 (the longest any team is likely to be after 200/1 Greece won Euro 2004). Thanks to the betting exchange, you can lay them at that price (hopefully, they’ll have a relatively easy group, ensuring a healthily fluid market, ie, one with a lot of punters looking to back them).

If you’ve got £1,000 you can do without for a month, you can now lay them for £10 worth of bets. If Belgium don’t win the World Cup that £10 is yours – covering your initial £10 outlay.

So far, so dull. Not many of us have got a grand that we can tuck away for the length of a World Cup. And even if we could lay with twice that amount, a liability of £2,000, it would still only guarantee us a minimum £10 profit (the £20 in bets we could take, less our original tenner on the Belgians winning the thing).

A tenner profit on a £2,010 investment, over a month: that’s equal to a month in a 6% savings account (hence my earlier comparison).

This is where we leave the economists and traders and get back to the realms of pure punting. I don’t think Belgium can win the World Cup – but I think that, given a fair run of luck and with the players they’ve got, they can get to the business end of the tournament.

I reckon we could see them get as short as 20/1 if they get through to a winnable last-16 match. And that’s when I’d go to the exchanges and start laying.

To break even at 20/1 you only have to lay £200 worth of bets. Every £20 you lay on top of that guarantees you a £1 profit. Lay £500 and you’ll get at least £15 profit. That’s 3% profit over the month; still not sexy but guaranteed – and you’ve also got the outside (very outside, let’s make no mistake) of a £4,500 profit if Belgium win, meaning you win £5,000 and pay out £500.

In fact, you’re guaranteed a profit if you lay up to £100,000 – assuming you’ve got the money and can find enough punters to bet a total of £5,000 on a team who have never got past the semi-finals before. So the bigger a hitter you are, the bigger the rewards; otherwise it’s boring but profitable.

And that sounds like the Belgians all over.

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