Panama vs Costa Rica Betting Tips

Both sides made winning starts to their attempts to reach the final phase of qualifying again. Panama were impressive 2-0 winners away to Jamaica meanwhile Costa Rica had to fight hard for an unspectacular but important 1-0 home win against Haiti thanks to a solitary Cristian Gamboa goal.

These two sides are both regulars in the final group phase but with Gold Cup finalists Jamaica also in their group, neither side is assured of progress here but a win for either in this match would put them in a very strong position to qualify.

You can get odds of 6/5 for both teams to score in this match which seems generous despite the fact that neither tend to be involved in high scoring games. However both sides often do score in matches involving Panama and it has happened in 10 of their last 15 matches including all of the games they played against opposition from this region at the Gold Cup.

While the goals aren’t exactly flowing for Costa Rica right now, they have discovered a bit of form after a poor 12 months following their excellent showing in Brazil last summer.

They’ve won 3 of their last 4 games with Uruguay and USA their other opponents and will certainly approach this game with a bit of confidence. That should certainly be true of Panama given their win in Jamaica so it might be a bit more entertaining than we might have expected and the pressure is slightly less given their opening wins so we should see a football rather than chess match.

Incredibly 8 of Panama’s last 13 matches have ended 1-1 and this should be a fairly even contest too with not much to choose between the sides so at 11/2 it seems worth a punt to back this to be another 1-1 draw.