World Cup Betting Odds

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About the World Cup

The idea of getting the world's greatest football countries together to compete at the highest level is credited to a group of French football administrators in the 1920's. Jules Rimet was the front man for this group and the original gold trophy was named after him.

Since the first competition, hosted and won by Uruguay in 1930, the FIFA World Cup has been held every four years apart from a 12 year break due to the Second World War between 1938-1950.

After it resumed in 1950 it has grown in status year-on-year and is now arguably the biggest sporting tournament in the world, with the whole planet getting caught up in the magic and tradition of the competition. Recent figures saw over 35 billion people watch worldwide in 2002 with over 1.5 billion tuning in for the final.

Every four years the tournament is hosted by different countries. The host nation alternated between Europe and the Americas until 1996 when it was decided that Japan and South Korea would act as co-hosts and went on to hold the competition in 2002.

History

The history of the FIFA World Cup has seen only seven different countries win the competition so far, with Brazil leading the way on five, Italy on four, Germany close behind on three, and first ever winners Uruguay and Argentina on two. France and England have won it once each.

Each team that wants to make it to the actual finals (except the host) will have to undergo over two years of gruelling qualifying matches, until just 32 teams are left to compete in the main competition.

World Cup format

The competition lasts around one month with the 32 teams split into eight groups of four teams. Those four teams will play each other in a league format once, with the first and second in each group progress through to the knockout stages.

Group winners will play group runner-ups in this next stage in one-off knockout matches, with this format continuing until two teams meet in the final. Extra-time and penalties may be needed in these knockout games in order to get a winner if games are drawn after 90 minutes.

Germany 2006

One of the best World Cups in the competition's history, Germany's four weeks of top-class footballing action will be remembered for its flawless organisation by the host nation.

South Africa will stage the next World Cup in 2010 for the first time and will have a lot to live up to if they want to better Germany's effort, but with years of planning and lessons learnt from previous competitions by the time four years passes it's sure to be another spectacle.

In 2006 expectations were high within the camps of the 32 teams that made it to Germany, but there can only be one winner and after 64 games and 147 goals it was the Italians that went on to lift to cup for the fourth time in their history beating France in Berlin 5-3 on penalties after drawing the match 1-1.

The final will always be remembered for the 'Zidane Headbutt' after the world class player bowed out of football after getting sent off for reacting to verbal taunts by Italian defender Marco Materazzi.

However it wasn't enough to stop FIFA giving Zinedine Zidane their World Cup player of the tournament with Miroslav Klosse of Germany winning the Golden Boot with 5 goals.

Betting

In the betting for 2010 Brazil are the clear favourites with all bookmakers to make it win number six, with a whole host of past winners and heavyweight nations such as England, Germany, Argentina, and holders Italy just behind them. One interesting other statistic is that out of all the 18 tournaments so far, six of them have been won by the host nation, showing that there really is such a thing as home advantage.