Busy, busy weekend coming up at sportsbooks all over the world and we’ll get it started with some soccer betting action from the UEFA Europa League. There’s a full slate of games in Europa League play today but we’ll take a look at a 3 PM Eastern/12 noon Pacific start time game between Fulham and Juventus. Fulham is a decent English Premier League side currently ranked 10th. Juventus is historically one of the top teams in all of European soccer, on the same level as Spain’s Real Madrid or England’s top teams Chelsea and Manchester United. For those of you who think soccer is boring, Google ‘Serie A match fixing scandal’ and read about Juventus’ fate over the past decade or so. Basically, former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi and officials from several major Serie A teams were running Italian soccer like Tony Soprano and Johnny Sack ran the garbage collection business of the NYC metro area. Moggi would eventually be banned from football for five years with a recommendation for a lifetime ban, while Juventus was demoted to Serie B for the first time in its history. Juvie has struggled somewhat since making it back to the top tier of Italian soccer, which led to the dismissal of team manager Ciro Ferrara in January. He was replaced by Alberto Zaccheroni and his tenure has been a ‘so far, so good’ situation.

UEFA EUROPA LEAGUE–FULHAM AT JUVENTUS (12 NOON PACIFIC/3 PM EASTERN)

The kneejerk reaction is to bet Juventus here.  Fulham has only played twice in Italy, and doesn’t play particularly well away from home.  The reality is that although Juventus is an overwhelming favorite, its more of a case where you’re paying for the team name rather than their current form.  Overall, Juventus has been playing well of late winning 4 of their last 6 games.  For whatever reason, they’ve been playing very poorly at their traditionally tough home field.  They’ve failed to score in their last two home games, and have lost 5 of 14 in Serie A play.  That is by far the worst home record of a winning team in Serie A–6 home losses is typically something you’ll only see from a team at risk of relegation.  They’re also 1-2-1 at home in European Cup competitions and haven’t scored more than a single goal in any game.  That’s not a team you want to be laying money with.

Fulham, meanwhile, has struggled on the road in EPL play scoring only 11 goals in 14 games.  They’re currently on a 3 game unbeaten streak away from Craven Cottage, but have only scored one during that stretch.  They have played reasonably well away from home in their European Cup competitions, with a 2-2-2 mark.  This is a game where we’ve got two teams that have trouble scoring goals, which leads us to a number of interesting betting opportunities.  Perhaps the best play on the game is the obvious one–going Under the generous total of 2′.  This price is from Bookmaker:

PLAY JUVENTUS/FULHAM UNDER 2′ -135

There’s a variety of ways to play the side on this game.  With two teams that have never faced each other and have struggled to score, neither wants to be facing a deficit heading into the second half of the aggregate score matchup at Fulham next week.  In other words, a draw is a likely result and more specifically a scoreless draw is not outside of the realm of possibility. Obviously, one way to play this is to take Fulham +1 at Bookmaker.  This may be the strongest position since a 1-0 Juventus win will get a ‘push’, and any draw or Fulham victory a win.

PLAY FULHAM +1 OVER JUVENTUS -135

Alternately, you can play the ‘draw’ position.  You’ll get a better payout, but obviously a win by either team is a loss.  You can also play *both* the handicap bet on Fulham and the draw, meaning that you’ll win both bets in the event of a tie.

PLAY JUVENTUS/FULHAM DRAW +265

And finally you can bet on the exact score of the game.  This adds limitless possibilities.  We’ll start with the most simple–betting the exact score draws that will still get us a win on our ‘Under’ positio  All of the exact score props are from Sports Interaction.

0-0 EXACT SCORE +700
1-1 EXACT SCORE +600

Either draw result would produce a nice payday.  A 0-0 draw would cash our totals bet, the Fulham handicap, the draw prop as well as the exact score prop for a net profit of +1065.  The 1-1 draw would be almost as good, giving us a +965 profit.  One nice thing about the low scoring, predictable nature of soccer is that it makes it a good sport for serious betting.  You could cover all of the ‘realistic’ exact score props and put yourself in a position where you’ve got the possibility of a number of very profitable results while limiting your downside.  For example, say you bet everything we’ve given above plus the following exact scores:

DRAW: 2-2 +1800

JUVENTUS WIN:

1-0 +500
2-0 +550
2-1 +650

FULHAM WIN:

1-0 +1000
2-0 +2300
2-1 +1600

This sets up a situation where any Fulham win gives you a profit, any Juventus win limits downside risk to three or four units and any draw gives you a nice multi-unit profit ranging from a +465 payoff for a 0-0 draw, a +365 profit for a 1-1 draw all the way up to a +1165 profit for a 2-2 draw.  The risk is a huge blowout by either team, but you have to keep the likelihood of that in perspective.  Juventus has scored more than 3 goals in a game twice this year and has allowed more than 3 goals once.  Fulham has scored +3 once and not allowed more than 3 goals in a game.

There are a variety of strategies you can take in this manner, but clearly when you have this many units at play on one game you have to be careful.  Strange things can (and do) happen even in a predictable sport like soccer.