It seems like there’s certainly more international football being played over the last few years. In European international football they’ve almost, but not quite yet, gotten rid of the dreaded international friendly games and have replaced it with the Nations League and thanks to the whole Covid pandemic more games have had to have been played to keep things on schedule. Not that we’re complaining, more football to watch isn’t a bad thing. But international football can be an absolute minefield to bet on so we wanted to write an article about some Tips for Betting on International Football matches.

Value

Value betting is always and will always be the single most important element when it comes to betting on football. If you’re not familiar with the concept you can read about it here. Let’s give you a summary of what value betting is. If you bet on a coin toss, it will either land on heads or tails. So it’s a 50% chance, that should be odds of 1/1 (Evens) or 2.0 in decimal. However, a bookie needs to get his cut, on both sides of the market we’ll add so they’ll give you odds of, say 1.95, or 19/20 in fractional odds. However, let’s say the bookie give you odds of 2.20 for heads and 1.80 for trails but because you know the chances are 50% you know that any odds above 2.0 represent value.

If you know your sport and the teams involved you can learn how to spot value pretty quickly. It takes a while and tools like Bet Dynamo’s Insight Page are an invaluable tool however we don’t offer international football, we only deal with domestic leagues. This is to do with the variances of tournament football. However, that doesn’t mean you cannot find value, of course you can but know that you must put in the grunt work and learn as much about the teams involved as possible. This brings us to our next point.

Team News and Motivation

If PSG were playing Norwich tomorrow and you saw the odds for Over 2.5 goals were at 1.80 would you take the bet? You probably would. But if we told you that Kylian Mbappe, Neymar, Lionel Messi and Angel di Maria hadn’t made the trip, would you still take the bet? Probably not. This small, quick example just shows the absolute importance of knowing the team news regarding the sides in action.

We need to also add that team motivation plays a huge role. Do any of you remember who Sam Allerdyce’s Bolton were a constant thorn in the side for Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal during the 2000s? Between September 2004 and February 2007 the sides played eight games, Arsenal won none of them. It became a rivalry from nothing and as the games progressed Boltan took more and more pride from not allowing Arsenal to beat them. Arsenal just became more and more frustrated until finally the duck broke and the short lived rivalry faded into the history of the English Premier League. Rivalries are long held in international football. France’s big rival is Germany, Germany’s is Netherlands, Netherlands are also Belgium’s and France are too. Spain want to beat France but Portugal want to beat Spain and England, well, everyone wants to beat England. Another example is Poland, they share a border with seven countries; Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Kaliningrand which is a province of Russia. It pays to know of these rivalries and this is just another reason why knowing as much as you can about the sides facing off against each other is so imperative.

Find the Best Odds

Don’t bother with brand loyalty when it comes to bookmakers. If your usual bookie is offering 1.90 for Over 2.5 goals when England take on Netherlands but the Asian bookies are offering 2.0 and the Betting Exchanges are offering 2.05. Then it’s as simple as this, you bet a tenner with your normal bookie and you’ll win your tenner back and nine quid. You do it with the Exchange and you get your £10 back and an additional £10.50. You’ll win an extra £1.50 just by going with the people offering the best odds. Shop around and find the best odds, it’s good to have a fair few accounts to get the best bang for your wagers.