African Cup of Nations: Angola great value for win
Published:The second round of African Cup of Nations group games is about to get underway and a long-odds victory for Angola over the tournament hosts South Africa represents the best way to make a profit on the next round of matches.
South Africa v Angola
In a competition riddled with draws thus far, those lucky few who snatch a win give themselves an excellent chance of qualifying for the latter stages and that is precisely what the Angolans are going to do here.
They’re a massive price to win the match at 5/2 and are by and away the form side coming into the game.
The Sable Antelopes’ 0-0 with Morocco in the opening game stretched their undefeated run to seven games and represented the fourth in succession in which they have kept a clean sheet.
With the Bafana Bafana struggling for goals – they’ve drawn blanks in five of their last seven, scoring against lowly Kenya and Malawi – another Angolan shut out is full of promise at 7/4.
One positive working in the hosts’ favour is that they are yet to lose in six meetings with their next adversaries. Three of these they’ve won 1-0, which pays out at the 4/1 mark, and six of them have yielded fewer than 2.5 goals.
The same can be said of all of Angola’s last seven. According to the betting, this match looks certain to be the eighth in which the total goals mark falls below 2.5; it can be backed as low as 4/11. With such short odds on one hand and a stringent defence colliding with a stuttering attack, it might be worth punting on fewer than 1.5 goals at 5/4 instead.
Morocco v Cape Verde Islands
The fact that the Cape Verde Islands have made the African Cup of Nations is commendable in itself, but the fact that they beat Cameroon to book their place is positively jaw-dropping.
The Blue Sharks are representing a nation with an estimated populace of around 560,000 and were widely expected to take a battering in Group A. They picked up a point against the hosts last time out to silence the critics once more and they can do the same again against their North African rivals.
The draw is available at 11/5 in this one, but with the islanders having managed just one goal in their previous four – not to mention that they’re coming up against a Moroccan team who have kept five clean sheets in their last six outings – 0-0 looks as though it’s going to be the score.
A calorific (as far as your wallet is concerned) 11/2 is the bounty for those who accurately predict a second successive goalless draw for both teams here, while those naysayers willing to shoot down the Cape Verdean dream can waste their money on the 7/4 that says Morocco will win to nil.
All odds and markets accurate as of publication’s time and date
