In all my years of betting soccer, I’ve never seen odds like this one. Spain is favored by 7.5 goals. This means if you bet on Spain, they would have to win by at least an 8 goal margin. Furthermore, even after this crazy point spread was established, people still loaded up on Spain. By game time, to bet on Spain you’d have to give 7.5 goals PLUS 2:1 in money (i.e. risk $200 to win $100).
Wouldn’t Spain normally just play slow after getting a big lead. Would they really try to crush Tahiti that badly? What could they possibly gain? Could the fix be on? Did someone pay the Spanish players lots of money to win by at least 8 goals?
Goal differential is often very important in soccer so there’s less of an emphasis on slowing down and holding a lead than in other sports. YMMV.
The record for goal differential in an international is 31-0. 8-0 scores happen quite often in World Cup qualifying when you have teams like the Faroe Islands or Saint Kitts and Nevis playing actual good teams.
I’m recording this to just fast-forward through it tonight and watch the goals. Normally, I would expect Spain to have possession for 60-70% of the match, and maybe even up to 80% against a team like Scotland, Malta, or San Marino (sorry, Scotland [“We’re sorry, indeed!” - Scotland]). Could Spain get as high as 90% for this match? I’ve got to believe the camera will really point to just one half of the field for each half.
Spain haven’t even been that great as Tahiti are there to be taken to the cleaners as they’re not sitting back. (even though it is currently 5-0). I think a 7-8 goal differential is fair because on paper Spain could quite easily get in to double digits, in reality scores of 7-8 aren’t uncommon, but 9 or more is really rare.
Final score 10-0. Someone should put a link to this match in the other current soccer thread for all those Americans who hate soccer because there isn’t enough scoring…
I’d imagine most of the Tahitian players were just so thrilled to be sharing the field with the Spanish superstars that they didn’t really care about the score. Nice to see they got a goal back against Nigeria though. Looking at their team page I see they beat the Cook Islands 30-0 back in 1971 as well.
You haven’t seen pre-2006 OFC competition. In the 2002 OFC qualifying Australia won their three pool games by 22, 31 and 11 goals respectively - and only covered the start in one of those.
