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2015 Gold Cup Betting – USA vs. Honduras

Zack Garrison

by Zack Garrison in News

Updated Jan 17, 2018 · 9:39 AM PST

USA (-225) vs Honduras (+650), Draw (+320)

Hosting a second straight edition of the 12-team tournament, Team USA will look to win back-to-back Gold Cups for the first time since 2007. The Americans will open their cup defense tonight against an overmatched Honduras side at Toyota Stadium in Dallas (9:30 PM Eastern).

Team USA are currently 3/2 co-favorites to win their sixth Gold Cup title, tied with Mexico at the top of the odds. The squad is playing with an up-tempo urgency of late and it has led to unprecedented success; the US recently downed the Netherlands (4-3) and Germany (2-1), both in Europe. The wins were arguably the best performances by an American soccer team, ever.

Playing at home against the weaker competition that CONCACAF has to offer, Team USA is expected to roll through the Group Stage.

But manager Jurgen Klinsmann isn’t going to take any of his team’s opponents lightly.

“We are under the expectations of winning this tournament,” Klinsmann said to Yahoo Sports. “Even if we know that teams like Honduras, Costa Rica and Mexico all are very good teams and can also beat us, you’ve got to be on top of things.”

Honduras were surprise qualifiers in the 2014 World Cup, but they couldn’t muster much once the tournament began, losing all three games in the Group Stage and posting a -7 goal difference. The team hired a new manager, Colombian Jorge Luis Pinto, after that disappointing performance. Pinto comes in with a winning pedigree, having led Costa Rica to the quarterfinals at Brazil 2014.

Honduras comes into the Gold Cup on the heels of a draw against Mexico (0-0). Despite being a friendly, the game was hard-fought from start to finish and probably should have featured a couple of ejections. But the main takeaway is that Pinto, a defensive-minded manager, is already making his presence felt. The Hondurans are already becoming a more aggressive side on the defensive end and aren’t giving an inch to their opponents. As a result, look for the US to have a dog-fight on their hands tonight.

Regardless of Honduras’ new-found tenacity, though, the Americans – who have beaten Honduras in three of their last five head-to-head – should come away with the full three points.

Pick: USA -225.

(Photo credit: Steindy (talk) 21:40, 22 November 2013 (UTC) (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.)

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