The Matildas kick off their Women’s World Cup campaign with a Group C clash against Italy on Sunday night and the Aussies are expected to get their campaign off to a winning start here.
Australia’s “golden generation” of female footballers have their best chance ever to win a World Cup here and they will need to take care of opponents like Italy in order to set themselves up for the knockout stage.
With Sam Kerr leading the line for the Aussies, there should be plenty of goals in this one, the big question is how many will be scored and by whom?
While we’d love to take the easy option and just run a whole bunch of “this is for Fabio Grosso in 2006” lines, instead we’re going to take a look at the markets and try to find some winning plays.
Total Goals
If there was to be a silver lining from the Matildas loss to the Netherlands last weekend, it was this: there will be goals in their matches. Sure conceding three to the Dutch wasn’t ideal but it was one of those pre-tournament friendlies where people kept their cards close to their chest. Ante Milicic will try and set his team up to keep a clean sheet but they have shown some vulnerabilities to let in a cheap goal or two. Of course with a forward line like they have with the aforementioned Kerr, they should be able to score a few more than they let in, especially against an Italian side that will be out to limit the damage.
Goalscorer
Chances are even if you aren’t a massive football fan, you will have heard of Sam Kerr… the thing is, she hasn’t scored a World Cup goal for Australia yet. That should change in this one and at the time of writing she is at fantastic value of $2.15 in the Anytime Goalscorer market and $4.75 in the First Goalscorer market. You also can’t rule out her strike partner Lisa De Vanna to get on the scoresheet although she might see her minutes managed as one of the senior members of the squad. If you want to back the story, check out Hayley Raso who 12 months ago, broke her back and has come back into the side.
The Result
Yeah look, this is definitely blind patriotism but you have to like the Matildas to put a dramatic lead up to the World Cup behind them with a strong showing here. At their current price of $1.65 to win, you can back that with some confidence although I’ll look for a bit of extra value and take a Matildas win and over 2.5 goals in the doubles market.