What is the point of these international breaks apart from for the encouragement of xenophobic neo-nationalists from Serbia to England? All we get is non-competitive, manipulated matches that are virtually irrelevant in that UEFA (or FIFA with regard to the World Cup) have already determined who the desired qualifiers are to be. Following the original competition draw, the arrangement of the match calendar and the selection of the referees, not very much is left to chance.
Additionally, on a political level, the matches allegedly attempt to confront the wide variety of nationalistic clashes around Europe and these efforts, although potentially worthy, frequently fall flat. This weekend sees the cancellation of the match between Azerbaijan and Armenia as the degree of distrust over Nagorno Karabakh undermines any chance of sport taking place. Similarly with the crazy idea of teaming up Turkey and Greece as the rioting in Athens demonstrated after the first meeting in Euro 2008. UEFA has learned that some match-ups cannot occur eg England and Eire or Turkey and Armenia but persists in tinkering in deep-rooted national disputes in an attempt to build bridges that are simply not yet ready to be built.
We'll focus on UEFA 2008 Qualifying Group Group E to emphasise some of the problems that result from these meaningless events. According to the media over the last couple of weeks, the only news items worthy of note have related to England's midfield. Can the Three Lions win without Fat Frank? Can the Three Lions win WITH Fat Frank? Should Stevie G have pain-killing injections? Or perhaps, we should let the national hero play in pain?! Can the Canadian can the Occupied Territories? The original focus was on the goalkeeping position but, as we will explain below, that particular prank has been sidelined by recent events and the critical focus is now on the midfield.
Whatever happens this weekend and next midweek against the Russians, England will qualify for next summer's Euro 2008 Finals. The print media demand it, the bookmakers will not allow failure, UEFA needs the major nations represented for their highly selective party, the marketing and advertising people require it and the television people insist on it. So, the only real questions to be answered by market analysts relate to the route of England's qualification. This process is more difficult than it appears due to the particularly hot nature of England's group. Just looking at the betting angle on the group is indicative of some of the distorting issues at play here. England is the prime global betting territory on the planet - turnover on all Premiership games and England internationals is stratospheric. The main betting centre in Europe that does not come under the proprietary influence of England/Gibraltar or the Far East is Russia. Via historical political ties, Russia still enjoys peculiar links with both Macedonia and Croatia plus a more antagonistic one with Estonia. Add unfortunate little Andorra and the European country formerly known as Palestine with the close links between Israeli and Russian betting markets, populations and football teams plus the anti-semitic bias in the current Kremlin leadership and we have one giant hotch-potch of a complex modelling job on hand here.
Analytically, there are three obvious approaches to such a qualifying group. Firstly, intuition and market memory reveals many of the more manipulative strategies that influence the outcomes. Bookmakers, in particular, are not a very bright bunch of people and tend to use the same tactics repeatedly so long as such tactics generate excessive profit. For example, check out how many England games are level at half-time with England going on to win after 90 minutes when the Three Lions are at short odds on. This has always been a solid earner for the layers. Secondly, we use our Unified Trading Model (UTM) to address both the fundamentals and the market information to find value in the markets whether these markets relate to individual games or to outright qualification. Thirdly, we utilise black box analytical tools eg neural networks to discover unusual patterns in the market information that might be undetectable even to the most experienced market analysts. In combination, under the robustness of our UTM, the realities that have been decided, on your behalf, in the corridors of power become evident.
It is an unfortunate fact that some of the people reading this post care not one jot about any of this but are so focused on Engerland, the land of hope and glory who, by the way, are never never never going to be slaves, just in case you were worrying about that particular issue, that the only thing that matters is will McClaren's millionaires beat the Occupied Territories? The analytical answer to this irrelevancy is that they do not need to win in order to qualify - a draw would suffice as long as the home games against Russia and Croatia produce victories and England avoid defeat in Moscow. We'll leave you to do the maths on this but the Croatia game is a given as they will have already qualified by the time they visit Wembley. From a bookmaking angle, the perfect scenario would be a huge gamble on England on Saturday followed by a wretched performance. The media reaction will be massively abusive and will persuade even the most ardent of loyalist that the tournament is up for the Three Lions. England will then be able to defeat the Russians (which will teach them to be held responsible for bringing polonium into the world's financial pit) with virtually no liabilities for the bookmakers. We are not saying that this scenario will occur - as I write, it is still around thirty hours to kick off and an awful lot of dollars, pounds and shekels have still to be placed on the poker table. But, Ladbrokes are claiming that they already have huge liabilities on an English win on Saturday. A few points that need to be made here. If Ladbrokes are encouraging punters to back England when the company, allegedly, already has major imbalances in their book then only a fool would rush in to demonstrate their patriotism. Secondly, if Ladbrokes were taking such a hit, they might just have been persuaded to shorten the price on the hosts which, of course, they haven't. Thirdly, Ladbrokes spokesperson Robin Hutchison spins that: "All the money, as you'd expect, has been for England" which, from the wide range of markets that we have access to, is simply a lie - most of the cumulative (ie professional and amateur) money, to date, has been on the draw.
To finish off, we would wish to address three other issues.
* Following on from our post yesterday regarding the supposed quality of Premiership referees, it is interesting to note that, for the weekend's 20 Euro 2008 Qualifiers, the number of English officials selected is precisely ZERO (three Italians, two Dutch and a couple of Spaniards but the PGMOB boys are conspicuous by their absence).
* All leisure punters should be aware that there is never any value in backing England even when they are up for a game. The bookmakers always price up England games with a built-in value remover which, for instance, on Saturday's game takes the English market supremacy approximately 0.65 goal shorter than it should be. From the bookmakers perspective, it is an unfortunate reality that the Three Lions do have to win occasionally in order to be able to present the bookies with the betting bonanza of next summer's finals. As there are an awful lot of mugs out there who bet on the English as some sort of article of faith - put your hand on your heart and your England badge and bet on the boys whatever the circumstances in a devout religious stylee - the only solution is value elimination. Indeed, if a punter were to blindly bet AGAINST England on the Asian Handicaps in EVERY game, you would generate a profit!
* "England's Number One" is a refrain that has reached the degree of tedium that can only be matched by those idiotic neophobes who denigrate musical instruments throughout England games in pursuit of the glory of the Second World War. There has been a major campaign to get Calamity James back between the posts for England as, with Fat Frank muppeting around the midfield and Michael Owen doing the business of Goldchip bookmakers, the triumvirate represent total control of the event for the layers. The screeching reached a zenith following Robinson's performance against the Germans - can there be a worse crime in this country than gifting the dreaded Germans a goal? Unfortunately, Calamity has been particularly calamitous in the intervening period and James reached his own zenith of creative underperformance at the Emirates last week when a full binliner in goal would have been of more use to the Portsmouth defence. Following on from his Grobbelaar-esque efforts against Chelsea the previous week, the media became strangely muted about Calamity's inclusion in either of the next two games. The bookies are desperate to get James back in the starting eleven but even they are aware that this is not a feasible argument currently. One has to feel for Scott Carson who is streets ahead of both James and Robinson (as is Robert Green, by the way) but has little chance of being promoted to his meritocratic position. Carson larked that: "Ray Clemence [England's goalkeeping coach] has got more chance of starting a game than me at the moment." True... Carson should do several things if he wishes to gain the Engerland Number One slot. Firstly, move to a southern club as the powers-that-be rarely venture north of Barnet. Secondly, start a ghost-written newspaper column issuing words of pseudo-wisdom to the masses. Thirdly, hang around Victor Chandler's flagship Mayfair casino until a dodgy bookmaker suggests an offer that cannot be refused. Sorted...
We are most definitely with The Guardian's Marina Hyde when it comes to spectacular society and the national football team - her view is that there is little or no difference between the "reality" of England and the "reality" of Amy Winehouse.
Send them both to rehab! No no no?
Update: Following the preparation of this post, there was significant money around Europe on an England victory against Israel throughout Saturday not that you would have guessed this from the pricing of the major firms who were obviously keen to disguise this punt. It was a bad day at the office for the layers on a £300 million ($600 million) global betting market. Additionally, the majority of the big teams at short odds favourite were landed with only Turkey and, very late in the day, Portugal and Spain coming to the bookies salvation.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
