European Under 21 Championships: Odds-on stalemate is a lay

European Under 21 Championships: Odds-on stalemate is a lay
Goals are expected in the somewhat meaningless Croatia v England clash but it's all eyes on France v Romania, where Jamie Pacheco is taking on the ever-controversial odds-on draw- According to the website free soccer tips page!



Odds-on draw must be opposed
France U21 v Romania U21

Monday June 24, 20:00

Live on Sky Sports Football

France coach Sylvain Ripoll won't have expected this third Group match against Romania lớn be a top-of-the-table clash. And he certainly wouldn't have expected to be trailing Matei Mirel Radoi's side, having won their first two games. But that's the position they're in after Romania's more comfortable wins over Croatia and England have left them with a better goal difference.

The end result is that a draw would see both sides go through: Romania as winners and France as best runners-up. If Romania lose, they might still be the best runners-up but if France lose, they can't qualify that way any more. All clear? Good. Let's try and predict what might actually happen in this match. You can prefer to the soccer tips guide page!

This match winner market is absolutely perfect for the conspiracy theorists. As is any match that has the draw at odds-on. Yes, it would be the perfect outcome in that it would send both teams through but let's just consider this for a minute: if they both play out a 'normal' game and put a reasonable amount of effort into scoring and there's 15 minutes left and they 'play out a draw' Test cricket-style then yes, no-one could really blame them.



But with that scenario being discussed so much ahead of the game among the media and fans, there's surely a lot of pressure on both teams lớn not allow the game to descend into farce. If both sides show a complete lack of intent lớn try to score, there would be stinging criticism from everywhere and even though there's nothing 'illegal' about not trying lớn win a game and just drawing it, it's not so easy lớn engineer one over 90 minutes of football.

It's also worth remembering that for every Disgrace of Gijon (West Germany v Austria 1984) and Sweden v Denmark (Euro 2004) there have been plenty more games over the years that haven't gone the way of the conspiratorial 'script'.

I realise that so far I haven't even began to mention the respective strengths and weaknesses of the two sides but when you have an odds-on draw, that's almost not the point.

I'm going lớn take the view here that both sides are going out lớn go out and try to win the game. Romania at 8.00 are certainly capable of doing so from what we've seen so far, while France would surely prefer to be 1-0 up should they concede a goal and have that lead as a safety net than it being 0-0 and suffering a sucker punch late on. I'm dismissing the conspiracy theory and laying the draw.