Shooting Stars

At the start of the tournament a certain Fernando Torres was right up there with Christiano Ronaldo as the favourites for top goalscorer of the European Championships. Now they’ve both drifted out to 14/1, according to Blue Square, despite both teams firing relatively well so far.

At the top of the table, predictably, we find the two players who are currently top of the scoring charts. Villa and Podolski have both performed well so far, Villa in particular has caught the eye and now finds himself a remarkable 8/13 on. Podolski is second, but distantly so, perhaps a reflection of the poor performance of his team so far.

For those into football betting, the top goalscorer prize always offers a few interesting ones. Who would have predicted Schneider to have scored the brace of goals that he has so far? Even the players who play for the very top sides and are scoring relatively freely (Villa) are not shoe-ins for completing the business, after all, their team could falter and stumble out, or the player themselves – increasingly finding themselves targets for the big defenders of opposition teams – could sustain an injury that would see them tumbling out of the tournament.

By this stage though, there is a lot to be said for the suggestion that the players at the top of the charts will stay there. The competition gets harder, more matches will be sorted through penalties, and there will be fewer defences as forgiving as the Russians and the Poles were in their opening matches.

Villa seems in a position to walk away with it. The other form team in the tournament, Holland, haven’t got a striker who is knocking them in regularly, Van Nistelrooy obviously has the talent to do so, but his role seems to be more focussed on occupying defenders so that the players around him can sneak in. If things continue, and the Spanish do have a match against the hardly impressive Greeks, Villa could come out of the Group Stages with five, six, or seven goals, so even if the Spanish then find themselves dumped out of the tournament in the next round he’d probably still end up topping the scorers chart.

Yet nothing is guaranteed, which is part of the charm of betting and the sport in general. Ronaldo hasn’t quite caught fire yet and is the sort of player who could rip a team apart and score a hat-trick in the process. Likewise, it is not beyond the realm of possibility for Ibrahimovic to suddenly turn up at the party and start knocking them in for fun. It only takes a couple of matches for the whole thing to turn on its head.

Football Betting Odds provided by Blue Square

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