Women’s World Cup: History points to England win

England’s women made a piece of history in the last round of the World Cup. Their 2-1 win over Norway was the first knockout match the side had won at the tournament in its history. Their reward is a tie against the host nation, who’ll have 50,000 fans baying for their blood.

If experiencing victory in the latter stages of a global tournament was a new sensation for the Lionesses, then their match against Canada, set to be played in front of a partisan home crowd, will provide an entirely different challenge.

Katie Chapman, the Chelsea midfielder, has already called the game the biggest of her 15-year international career and the odds suggest her assessment isn’t far off the mark.

Ladbrokes give England a 23/10-sized mountain to climb in order to make it to the semi-finals with a win, while the hosts are rated at 13/10 to seal a 90-minute victory.

Neither of those prices rank as the most lucrative on offer though, with the pair’s head-to-head history suggesting it should be the both-teams-to-score market that gets the bulk of the attention.

11/20 on one or both sides failing to find the net may not seem like the most impressive of offerings, but the regularity with which the bet has landed in previous England v Canada matches means it is the only punt worth considering.

The pair have played six times in the past, with the most recent five of them all seeing at least one side fail to score.

Considering all of those matches have been played in the past two years, it looks to be just a matter of time before the bookie is paying out on yet another successful bet in that area.

There have been under 2.5 goals scored in all of those five matches, which puts a healthy dent in the 2/5 odds of this encounter being a sixth low-scoring meeting in succession.

During that run of head-to-heads, England have won four times to nil. A repeat, which would set up a semi-final against either Australia or Japan, is a 15/4 possibility, with the Canadians priced at 21/10 in the same market.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.

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