Women’s World Cup Betting – USA vs. Colombia

USA (-600) vs Colombia (+2500), Draw (+700)

The US women’s national team remain the favorites for the 2015 World Cup, but they will need to be on upset alert tonight as they clash with Colombia in the Round of 16 (8:00 PM Eastern at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, Canada).

Team USA hasn’t looked spectacular so far, but has done everything necessary to position themselves for a run to the final, beating Australia (3-1) and Nigeria (1-0) while drawing against Sweden (0-0) in a trio of tough group stage matches. The biggest criticism heaped on the USWNT so far is over the lack of offensive firepower. Women’s soccer pundits are used to seeing the US rack up the goals, but the with just four through three matches, it’s clear that parity is slowly arriving to the women’s game.

That said, the American attack would probably look a little more potent if star playmaker Alex Morgan wasn’t slowly recovering from injury. Morgan didn’t play against Sweden, and was limited to 60 minutes against Nigeria.

Colombia, meanwhile, recorded the biggest upset of the tournament to date when they downed France (2-0) in the group stage. The team couldn’t keep the momentum going, though, losing to England (2-1) and drawing Mexico (1-1) in their other fixtures. They finished third in their group, but had enough points to advance as one of the top third-place teams.

Nonetheless, the Colombian players remain confident heading into tonight’s game, and have even made somewhat disparaging remarks about their opponents.

“They’re clearly taller than us [and] more athletic, but they don’t have the heart that we Colombians have,” midfielder Yoreli Rincon said according to Philly.com. “They’re going to have to fight us.”

These two squads have met twice with team USA winning both by a score of 3-0 (first at the 2011 World Cup and then at the 2012 Olympics). Even though the Americans are struggling to score (by their standards), Colombia will be overmatched. In reality, they were outplayed in all three of their group stage games and are just lucky to be here.

Pick: USA (-600). 

(Photo credit: joshjdss [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)