Champions League Betting Preview - The Long Road to Moscow Starts Now
22th Jul 2007, 17:51
The long road to next May’s Champions League final in Moscow has started as the minnows of European club soccer fight it out in the first qualifying round of Europe’s premier club event. Twenty-eight teams from Malta to Montenegro are dreaming of glory, with just three qualifying rounds between them and the big boys in the group stages, and PinnacleSports.com will be providing up to 60% better odds every step of the way.
The pre-qualifying stages of the Champions League involve three qualifying rounds, with the UEFA members entrants from leagues ranked 16 or lower contesting the first round of two-leg contests. The process continues through two further rounds, with the subsequent opponents representing leagues progressively higher up the European domestic hierachy. The 16 teams that emerge successfully from the third and final stage will join a similar number automatically qualified clubs - including the cream of Europe’s major soccer leagues - for the all important group stages.
Though you won’t see the likes of FC Rangers from Andorra quoted in PinnacleSports.com’s Champions League outright betting markets, the first qualifying rounds, in which such minnows appear, can represent excellent betting opportunities if you do your homework. Many, if not all, the teams participating at this stage are off the radar of mainstream soccer bettors, and sportsbooks do not dedicate an enormous amount of resource to setting the odds at this stage of the competition. In these situations studious bettors can profit by betting into wrongly priced teams at square books, and hedging their bets at sharp, low commission books such as PinnacleSports.com offering c102% betting markets for the qualifying rounds.
At this level, where teams operate with limited squads, team news can be difficult to get hold of but very illuminating for those that make the extra effort giving an all important edge, and making the crucial difference between profit and loss.