Euro 2012 betting preview - Group D - Sweden 1/2

The Swedish team are covered today in our next Euro 2012 betting preview. The Scandinavians are making a habit of qualifying for major tournaments, and this time around they have been drawn into group D. The group is a difficult one, as they will face France, England, and Ukraine.

Qualifying

In the qualifying stage for the Euro 2012, Sweden faced a difficult task to qualify automatically as they were grouped with Netherlands. In the end they finished as runners-up, but only 3 points behind Netherlands. Sweden inflicted Netherlands with their first defeat in 17 qualifiers with a 3-2 victory in the last group game. Furthermore, Sweden won 8 of the 10 matches (Scoring a total of 31 goals), but this sounds more impressive than it was - the rest of the group was poor with Hungary, Finland, Moldova, and San Marino all making up the numbers.

Euro 2012 betting odds

For Sweden to win the tournament you get odds 81.0 (Blue Sq). As a winner of the group, they are outsiders at odds 7.00 (Pinnacle), and if you want to bet on them qualifying or not, odds can be backed at 3.00 to qualify (Betfred) and 1.36 not to qualify (Stanjames).

These were the top scorers in the Euro 2012 qualifying stage:

• Zlatan Ibrahimovic.     5 goals in 8 games.
• Ola Toivonen.             2 goals in 9 games.
• Johan Elmander.         2 goals in 10 games.

Odds on the Euro 2012 fixtures:

• Ukraine v Sweden (Kiev) Best odds: 2.50 3.35 3.45
• Sweden v England (Kiev) Best odds: 4.50 3.60 1.95
• Sweden v France (Kiev) Best odds: 4.50 3.60 2.10

Betting analysis: A really tough group for Sweden, and we believe they will have great difficulty getting out of it. 1.36 not to qualify (Stanjames) seems a bit short so maybe to finish bottom of Group D at odds 3.20 (10bet) could be better value. With goals hard to come by for Sweden, value can be found in the Top Swedish goalscorer market. A small outside bet will be Ola Toivonen at 13.0 (BetVictor). If you think they will go home without scoring then 21.0 is available also at BetVictor.

Euro 2012 Sweden team sheet

Key Men: Goalkeeper

Andreas Isakson (PSV) 91 caps, 0 goals. Isakson is a huge goalkeeper with very good reflexes. As a goalie he is very experienced and a commanding figure in his box.

Key Men: Defence

Mikael Lustig (Celtic) 23 caps, 1 goal. Lustig is a tall and athletic right back who can play centrally too. He is although more suited to attacking football, and is a good crosser of the ball. Downsides are that he can be caught out defensively and doesn't relish the physical play.

Olaf Mellberg (Olympiakos) 112 caps, 7 goals. Mellberg is an extremely experienced and talented central defender. He reads the play well and is good in the air. Overall a good positional player and good organiser.

Andreas Granqvist (Genoa) 16 caps, 2 goals. This is a composed central defender who is good technically, and has good strength and pace. Granqvist has scored a few goals in his career.

Conclusion so far:

Sweden have bags of experience in the backline, but they are somewhat weakened by the absence of Daniel Majstorovic through injury. Our opinion is that Sweden cannot hope to contain France or England, indeed in qualifying they conceded 6 against Netherlands in two games, so they are up for at least two very very difficult matches.