2006 Soccer World Cup Betting Lines

The 2006 World Cup will be hosted in Germany and will be one of the major sports events of the year, both in terms of pure spectacle and for the vast number of bets that will be placed on a variety of outcomes at online sports books and in betting shops around the globe.

There is an incredibly wide range of World Cup bets on offer, and we're going to take a look at the most popular world cup betting lines that bettors will be wagering on during the tournament.

The odds makers who set the lines for world cup betting action all agree that the two biggest markets will be to pick the outright winner of this the 18th World Cup and to select the top individual goals scorer (Click here for our featured World Cup Soccer Sportsbooks).

It is a measure of Brazil's perceived dominance at the 2006 World Cup that these South American soccer giants are heavily favored in the betting lines for the outright winner (they are a best price of 5/2 to win it all, with the next team - England - easy to bet at 7/1). Interestingly, when it comes to the odds for top individual goal scorer no less than three of the four top candidates are Brazilian! Wayne Rooney may well have been at the head of this particular betting line but for his foot injury and the consequent fear that he will miss the opening group games.

Other World Cup betting markets include Group betting to determine the winners of the eight groups in the first stage of the 2006 World Cup. Certain groups have associated betting lines that can only be described as 'heavy chalk' and there is good value in fading some of those short-priced favorites. Germany, England, and Portugal are all expected to win their groups, but if you look closely at these specific World Cup betting lines you might find that the value lies elsewhere with dark horse teams. Those top teams will almost certainly advance to the second round, but that does not necessarily mean they will also win their groups.

We wouldn't be surprised to see teams like Ivory Coast, Czech Republic, and even Sweden contest strongly to win their particular groups. In the first phase of the contest their tend to be more betting upsets than in the latter elimination rounds when the best teams, nations like France, Germany, and of course Brazil tend to progress. In the knock-out games it can be tough to bet the underdog and win, but don't make the easy mistake of always betting on favorites in a tournament that usually produces a lot of betting upsets.

Most World Cup fans like to bet on the favorite and on the Over for total goals, and so odds makers shade those betting lines because a lot of casual bettors will still take prohibitive odds. Look closely at the line for the draw or the upset win, as these can provide excellent betting value in the group phases.

There are also a number of prop betting lines for the World Cup, and these can be a lot of fun and very profitable as well to dabble in. You can bet on the stage of elimination for a specific team, or the winning continent for World Cup 2006, and even try to predict a team's total goals during the World Cup campaign.

World Cup betting lines can be very soft and are generally beatable. There are a lot of games that feature teams that are not well-known and are underestimated. If you bet this World Cup shrewdly you can find a lot of value in the lines for individual games, and you should devote most of your bankroll to these spots as opposed to trying to win proposition bets (even top goalscorer for the contest would fall into this category) that can often be impossible to forecast with any degree of accuracy.

Click here for our featured World Cup Soccer Sportsbooks.

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