Euro 2021 Day 2 Trading on Betfair | Football Trading

Saturday is the first big day at the Euros with three games. No doubt the beers will be in full flow from 2pm onwards around the country…

Turkey v Italy last night was a smooth starter. The first half was very much as expected. As I said yesterday in this blog, it was a clear scalping opportunity for some early scalping. We had a brief jitter in the market around the 20-minute mark with a penalty appeal, but other than that, Turkey were happy to sit back and let Italy have the ball.

An ideal start to the tournament, stress-free. Stakes were moderate but I didn’t want to start too aggressively with the trades.

It was nice to see Italy pick up the tempo in line with the average goal stat shared in yesterdays update before scoring early in the second half.

Also, did anyone else notice Infogol wasn’t updating in-play? That was annoying – I knew Italy were on top and they did update the xG figures at HT, but hopefully, that isn’t a common occurrence during the tournament.

It was also very interesting to see Italy smashed up pre-off, 1.55 into 1.44. That’s a huge move pre-off, I’m interested to see what might happen to the favourites this weekend. In fairness here though, I felt the 1.55 on Italy looked massive – indeed even at 0-0 at HT they were still below that price. Let’s see what happens but there could be some excellent pre-off moves to be caught this weekend…

Onto day 2 and we have three games…

• Wales v Switzerland
• Denmark v Finland
• Belgium v Russia

Today is going to feel like a very long day, so it’s important you’ve got your head on straight and pick your battles carefully. Be careful not to mix pleasure with the finances!

Many punters are going to be chasing come the final game; don’t be one of them. My pre-off trading thoughts are as follows:

Wales v Switzerland

This isn’t a game I have a very strong opinion on, and I’m expecting a slow start to my trading today. I feel this is a game where you want to react to what happens on the pitch rather than have a ready-made in-play plan when XYZ happens.

The main reason I’m not very keen on anything here is the two teams are very different. Wales have been focusing on being strong at the back recently, while Switzerland are happy to play an open game. Look at their recent games – they concede plenty. Looking at the average goal times it’s the same story. Wales only scored three times after the 60th minute in qualifying, but Switzerland scored most of their goals in the last 15 minutes.

I’m happy to see how the first half goes here, possibly react to a goal or scalp unders if play looks slow. I wouldn’t rave about this opportunity, but a trade on unders (1.5 or 2.5) could be the target in the mid-second half – 55 minutes to 70 minutes. Let’s see what happens.

Denmark v Finland

If truth be told this is another game you don’t want to go steaming in on. Finland has been doing well lately but at a much lower level. They beat the Irish recently, but they have a pretty poor side now and score very little. Denmark’s average goal time in qualifying was 40 minutes in their games, with 49 minutes for their first goal scored. Finland’s stats don’t put me off the early unders trade or scalping the draw for example, just like we did with Turkey v Italy last night. I would be a little careful on this one though because of the gulf in class, but it seems an obvious slow start and targeting the trading opportunities that brings.

If you dig a little deeper on the xG figures on Finland, they actually aren’t that good at all. Yeah, they had a few Nations League wins but I wouldn’t be excited about that. Denmark should win, but a quiet start will be my target here.

Belgium v Russia

As an outright bet or a pre-off bet, Belgium is attractive at 2.06. I’ll happily skip the beer garden for this game! Russia are bang average. Belgium beat them twice in the qualifiers and were well on top in both games too. There’s a lot of hype around the Belgium team for the tournament, so I’m surprised to see them 2.06 – I’ll wait and see how play starts and develops, but I’ll be having some of that at some point.

Looking at the game on paper, it seems to me that the best hope for Russia is a 0-0 draw where they play their hearts out at the back. I’m sure Belgium will be well on top at times, and we could see some excellent trading opp’s with stalling points and money flowing into the market. In short, all over Belgium for this one once I see they’ve started OK.

I reckon today is a day for reacting to goals and play on pitch etc. The only angle I’m confident on is Belgium because they offer a lot of value, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see a banging opp in-play on the other two games. Yesterday was a good start, and I don’t want to give that away with something I’m not as confident on – it’s going to be a month full of opportunity and it’s about picking the right spots.

Related Blog: Trading Knockout Football On Betfair: Champions League