One of the most important events in the sport of Soccer took place last week as the drawings were held for the category groups in the World Cup competition coming up in June down in Brazil.
The drawings are a game of chance, but good luck was not with the American team that day. Actually, it could not have been much worse. Team USA got placed in the most dreaded group of contenders possible. They will be in Group G with Ghana, Portugal and Germany, three of the strongest teams going into the competition.
Not only that, by sheer coincidence it seems, Team USA has once again been grouped with the same two teams, Germany and Ghana, that were responsible for eliminating the USA from the past three World Cup events.
The road ahead for the USA team will not be easy but by no means impossible, even though the grouping has been dubbed the ‘group of death’ by the press. Oddsmakers reacted quickly to the unfortunate grouping and the odds to win the World Cup for Team USA moved from a respectable 50-to-1 all the way up to 125-to-1 after the draw.
It was the team from Ghana which knocked the USA out of the last two World Cups. That same Ghana team just knocked a highly rated Egyptian team, which is coached by former USA manager Bob Bradly, out of the World Cup competition last month during the qualifying rounds.
Jeff Sherman, who handles the soccer odds at the LVH SuperBook, told reporters, “Groups B, D, and G look the toughest, with the possibilities of a Spain/Netherlands/Chile, Uruguay/England/Italy, and Germany, Portugal/USA not progressing out of the group stage.”
Group G includes Portugal which boasts Cristiano Ronaldo who many feel is one of the best players active today. The USA will face Ronaldo and Portugal in its second match and will be hard pressed to match their technical skills with the polished Portuguese squad.
As an added note, Portugal could be looking at a bit of revenge against the USA team as it was the US squad that upset Portugal and knocked them out of the World Cup in 2002.
So the USA moves to 125-1 while Ghana hold steady at 100-1. Portugal is at 25-1 and Germany has moved from 9-2 to 5-1. Brazil remains the World Cup favorites at 5-2 and the odds on second place Argentina have dropped from 5-1 down to 4-1.
