Much has been made about the strength of Germany’s squad at this World Cup, despite the loss of Marco Reus. A few of their players are returning from injury, haven’t played a huge amount of football this season in the positions they expect to play for Germany and they lack a world class striker. It is yet to be seen as to whether Klose will get a good shot at beating the all-time World Cup goalscoring record. Another option is to play Muller, or even Gotze in his place. I would be wary of betting on a German goalscorer, purely because of the uncertainty of the starting 11 and their tendancy to share goals around the team.
Portgual, in my opinion, have a great chance of getting more out of this game than many people believe. They have a strong squad, starting with the defence – Alves and Pepe form a strong centre-back pairing – along with Coentrao and Periera. Someone will anchor the midfield/defence, probably Carvalho or Veloso if the former is struggling with injury. Then the key midfielder will probably be Moutinho. He’s the link and the creative option to try and help Ronaldo do all of his attacking jobs. Meireles will try and be mobile, Nani will offer help via 1 wing, and Postiga will occupy space up front. The obvious Portguese bet is some kind of goal involving Ronaldo – Ronaldo to score last @ 4/1 is a possibility and decent value because of his free-kick threat and will to win the game towards the end.
I think it will be a tight game, both have the ability to score and to come back froma goal down. Portgual are a ‘tournament team’. They haven’t changed much in recent years, but they will fight and grind out results and all of a sudden everyone will be surprised. Germany/Draw in ht/ft @14/1 looks good for this game, and potentially Portgual/Draw as well at the same price. I think that if Portugal can get the transition from midfield to attack working well, they have a good shot of winning the match. Counter-attacking with Ronaldo and Nani could be the key. In terms of looking for the best value for Man of the match, I would gamble that Portgual end up the better side and then go with an attacking player (defenders can be hard to predict – if one playes well they normally all play pretty well). I’d go with Moutinho Fifa Man of the match @16/1.