WHY CATS DON'T LIKE SOCCER...BUT DOGS DO 

Hi folks, Bob Akmens here.  If you're an American and you're looking at this page: congratulations! You're going to discover what the sharp gamblers in the rest of the world have known for years: betting world soccer matches (that's what "games" are called) is probably the best and most profitable betting option there is - and that includes all American sports. Shocking, huh?

Let's analyze that revelation and look at some of the reasons why that's been true for me in the years I've handicapped - and bet - soccer matches.  First, understand that soccer - or "football" as everyone else in the world calls it - is played on every continent (except Antarctica) and in every country of the world.  It is far and away the most popular international sport and tends to be the national sport of most countries. My world soccer coverage staggers the imagination. I cover 100 countries and probably close to 5000 soccer clubs (that's what they call soccer "teams" everywhere else).  It boggles the mind.

It also means that somewhere on this earth, at any given time, the weather will be suitable to play soccer. You wouldn't really want to play - or sit and watch - a soccer match in northern Russia in January - though some fanatics (that's where the term "fan" came from) probably do - but you can certainly play in dozens of other countries at that time.

So, international soccer action is endless - day after day - even hour after hour.  When I handicap soccer, I look at the match start-times which can range from 1AM Eastern Time for a match in Japan to a match at 10PM Eastern Time in Latin America.

So how does that make betting soccer a very profitable sport?  Because there are hundreds and hundreds of games to choose winners from.  It gets literally overwhelming during a fall weekend because if I were to comb every available sports book that offers lines on every available soccer match, I would be looking at maybe 500 different matches on a weekend card!  And I don't know anyone who can look at that many games without their eyeballs dropping out.  So, I'll look at what I believe to be the most-available lines and choose several plays from a huge betting-card.

As I detail in the "How Bob Akmens Picks Winners" page on this website, I use a computer-model to do my soccer handicapping.  It is by far the most-selective of all of my computer-models. And, as I've explained, it can afford to be with so much action going on everywhere in the world.  That's why soccer is such a great betting sport for me.

Understand that my own clients - some of whom have been with me for 20 years or longer in various sports - might also be reading these pages on my site.  I would never jeopardize my reputation with phony-baloney tales of great accomplishments.  Having said that, I can tell you that a few years ago, I had the most magical run in giving out soccer plays.  I won 18 in a row!  If that had happened due to pure chance (which it obviously didn't) the odds would have been astronomical.  For instance, the odds of flipping a coin and getting 18 heads (or tails) in a row - which is the essentially the same thing as picking team A or team B to win (though in soccer betting you have another option: picking a draw to happen - we call that a "tie" in the U.S), those odds of 18-0 are more than 120,000-to-1 against!  But I did it and clearly sent out my email reports daily listing those plays - and noting to one and all when it was all over that we had done just that - won 18 plays in a row. Some were favorites, some were dogs; some were unders and some were overs.

A few years ago, the soccer World Cup was played in Germany.  It's estimated that 2 billion of the planet's 6+ billion souls were watching when Italy won that 2006 Cup championship.  This makes our Super Bowl pale by comparison. I had many of my soccer clients ask me to handicap these games. My answer to them was that the teams competing there were national teams comprised of players who usually never play with each other.  So, we would be looking at the equivalent of handicapping dozens of All-Star games, one after another.  But I tweaked my predictive model a bit and convinced The Sports Eye to monitor these affairs. When all was done, my World Cup record was posted on that site: 20 wins, 4 losses.  That's what a good handicapper can do with soccer!

Soccer has never really caught on in the United States. The reason?  Apparently, compared to our American sports, soccer is unexciting - boring - low-scoring.  None of which I personally buy into. Regrettably, our culture and society have devolved (notice my choice of verb; not "evolved") to the point where everything seems to be disposable - we no longer fix things, we throw them away; and so many Americans are obsessed with instant, immediate gratification. We absolutely must have something yesterday.  Even the NHL eliminated a 100-year-old tradition of games ending in a tie for this very reason.

And even what passes as the United States' top soccer league, Major League Soccer (the MLS), is not that major-league, David Beckham aside (who happens to be an oft-injured, once-great, past-his-prime guy these days). Precisely because MLS matches don't fill 50,000-fan stadiums as our "football" games do (some MLS matches play to less than 10,000 in the stands), salaries for the average MLS-player are miniscule compared to the salaries of top-notch players on top-tier soccer clubs throughout the world.

The undisputed top soccer-league in the whole world is the English Premier League (a collection of 20 clubs) - and if Man U (which is Manchester United to the uninitiated) were to play Arsenal at Wembley Stadium in London you would not believe how many people would be in that facility watching a boring soccer match. When that place was first built in 1923, a match took place between Bolton and West Ham (both still in the Premier League). The official capacity was 127,000.  How many people were at that match?  You couldn't turn around because there were so many standing-room only fans. Estimates are there were between 240,000 and 300,000 people jammed-in! That's truly incredible.

By the way, if a soccer play starts early in the morning American-time, I do give it out the prior day. Logically, a 7AM Eastern-time start in Russia cannot be given out at 6AM.

The world, ex-USA, is soccer-crazy. I do hope that you would like to make some of that crazy-money that can be made betting soccer and will give my soccer service a try!