Venezuela vs Paraguay Betting Tips

Baseball mad Venezuela, so long the whipping boys of South American football have made real strides in recent years and have been very competitive during the last 2 World Cup qualifying campaigns. They finished only 1 place below Uruguay, who made Brazil via the play-offs, during the last campaign and 8 points above Paraguay who finished last after a desperate showing in which they only won 3 matches and picked up just 2 points on the road.

Given Paraguay had qualified for the previous 4 World Cups it was an awful showing and they’ll be keen to get this campaign off to a much better start. However it might not be that easy and it’s probably fair to say that this isn’t a golden generation of Paraguayan footballers and their failure last time might be the start of a longer trend.

This is likely to be a really tense game as winnable matches don’t come around too often for the weaker sides in the South American section and defeat for either would represent a really poor start.

Since the last qualifying competition ended in 2013, Paraguay haven’t really made any great strides to suggest they’ll perform any better this time around. They’ve only won 3 of their 18 matches inside 90 minutes since they lost at home to Colombia in their final 2014 World Cup qualifier.

They did prove stubborn opposition at times during Copa America though, holding Argentina and Uruguay in the group phase before a penalty shoot-out win over Brazil in the Quarter Finals. However the 6-1 mauling they received against Argentina in the Semi-Finals and subsequent losses to Peru and Chile since then suggest that all is still not well with them.

Venezuela are slight favourites to win the game but you still have to wonder whether or not they have the conviction required to go out and do that. They went out in the group stage at Copa America despite a 1-0 win over Colombia in their opener and suffered a 3-0 defeat to Honduras only last month in a friendly.

It’s far from the ideal build up to this game and their naturally cautious approach is likely to be even more evident on the back of that result. They were the lowest scorers in South America during 2014 World Cup qualifying but had a better defensive record than Chile and Uruguay, two sides who made the finals.

This has all the makings of an tight game with neither side wanting to give much away so early in the 2 year qualifying process. Both sides are lacking that creative genius who might just produce a moment of magic so it seems a solid bet to say that at least one of these sides will fail to score on the night at 4/5.

They may well just end up cancelling each other out and an uninspiring 0-0 draw could be the outcome in what isn’t likely to be a great footballing match. You can back that to be the case at 15/2.