Football is a confidence game

Whatever sport or game you play at a very high level (if you happen to do) then there are skills that are far beyond merely knowledge and ability that you will need to possess. In fact skills are probably the wrong term for it. The best exponents of any field tend to have that little bit extra. This can be a psychological edge or it can be something as simple as having the confidence to do certain things and they simply do not have the fear of being made to look stupid that certain other players do.

Confidence in sport can be a very fragile thing but this applies to life as well. You could be a supremely confident driver but if you were involved in a serious road accident and especially one that was your fault then your confidence could be shattered in an instant. It is the same with sportsmen. Another factor is concentration, this is something that is difficult to instil but sports psychologists persevere all the same.

The problem is that concentration is hard work and people don’t like hard work on average. If you are going to place bets on this years World Cup then I strongly advise you to find a team that are both supremely confident and whose players are in a good frame of mind. It is too early to judge yet as we have three months to go and anything can happen. Look at England, three months ago we were riding high and now we have Ashley Cole who is a major doubt for the World Cup, Wayne Bridge announcing that he no longer wants to play for England, Rio Ferdinand injured and Joe Cole playing nowhere near his best.

We also have John Terry getting booed by his own fans and being stripped of the England captaincy and this is all in three months. In football betting then you should look for little factors that determine results. Like England for instance, I would back them to make the quarter-finals because they are a very fine side. But they really struggle not to concede goals against very strong teams.

This isn’t down to a lack of ability; it is a combination of lack of confidence and a lack of concentration. These qualities are difficult to replace and I expect them to get exposed in the latter stages of the tournament. So backing England to reach the quarter-finals and then opposing them will be a sound strategy in my mind. I fully expect Capello not to let them fail in the group stages and I also expect us to get past one knock-out round. Then against the better teams our soft underbelly will get exposed.

Either our left back through lack of experience or lack of concentration gets exposed or we lose key goals at key times. Add to that the psychological problem of not having achieved anything for so long and England can be easily opposed from the quarter-finals onward.

I am English by the way but I am also a realist. England can win the World Cup but they will need to get luckier than a few of the others to do so.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson