Daily Sports Betting Preview: Tuesday Soccer From Italy, USA, Brazil

• Inter Milan are +100 favorites over Napoli in the Italian Serie A.
• The Columbus Crew have even odds over Minnesota United in the MLS tournament.
• Fortaleza are +147 favorites over Ceará in the Copo Do Nordeste, one of Brazil’s cup tournaments.

ORLANDO, Fla. – The Daily Sports Betting Preview is back, with this Tuesday edition of everyone’s favorite betting coverage series!

Today, the Preview starts out by looking at Serie A, which has been won by Juventus, as matches continue to provide betting opportunities.

Then, the Preview turns from Italian soccer to American soccer, as the MLS tournament continues tonight.

Finally, in keeping with the soccer theme of this edition of the Preview, the last sporting event on the table today is Brazilian soccer.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get started!

Serie A Betting

Serie A, as far as the competition to win the league goes, is over – Juventus have won. However, there are several matches yet to be played in the league.

As the main audience for this column are bettors, it behooves the Preview to cover the league as it continues, despite Juventus’ victory.

In fact, several of the teams playing today were hot on the heels of Juventus and might have some frustrations to take out on their opponents.

Let’s check out the matchup between Inter Milan and Napoli, the second and seventh place teams in the league, respectively.

Inter Milan have even odds to take this matchup on the moneyline, which makes sense. They are currently sitting in second place in Serie A, one point up on Atalanta, and 17 points ahead of Napoli.

After the top four in Serie A, the quality of teams takes a bit of a dip. As an example, fourth place Lazio have 75 points on the season, while fifth place Roma have 64 points on the season.

In other words, the gap between second place and seventh place is a lot larger than it sounds like it should be.

That said, the match is far from a freebie for Inter to clean up.

The odds above are handicapped via what is known in the soccer world as Asian handicapping, a technique developed in Indonesia.

What they mean, effectively, is that when you wager on them, you’re splitting your bet - you put half the money on 0, and half the money on +/- 0.5, depending on which team you bet on.

As for what this says about the match in question - it tells savvy sports bettors that the sportsbooks are not comfortable with a full Inter Milan -0.5 spread here.

This is certainly something for Serie A bettors to keep in mind.

MLS Is Back Odds

The MLS tournament continues today, and there are some interesting betting opportunities available on the matches scheduled for this evening.

Instead of deep diving one match, this edition of the Preview will take a look at both of the MLS tournament games to be played tonight.

The first match features the Columbus Crew taking on Minnesota United, and airs at 8:00 p.m. EST.

The first thing that jumps out about this matchup is that it has almost identical odds to the matchup discussed in Serie A, between Inter Milan and Napoli.

The favorite, Columbus, are +100, with even odds on the three-way moneyline. The underdog, Minnesota, have +245 odds that indicate their relative competence, but do not put them even with the favorites.

Slightly trailing the underdog’s odds are the odds of a draw, which are set at +245.

The second match tonight is between the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati, and airs at 10:30 p.m. EST.

In this match, the favorite is significantly favored. The Timbers have -130 odds, making a Timbers win the most likely outcome according to the major online sportsbooks.

Cincinnati have passed the inflection point where they are so much worse than their opponent that the odds of a draw exceed their odds of winning the match outright.

In other words, the two most likely outcomes over 90 minutes are a Timbers victory or a draw.

Brazil Soccer Betting

Turning from the Italian and American soccer leagues, the Preview finds itself covering Brazilian soccer for the first time in a long time.

The match on the table today is one of the semifinals of the Copo Do Nordeste competition and features two quality teams facing off for a chance to go to the finals.

Both of these teams are in Brazil’s top flight, which actually bears the same name as Italy’s - Serie A.

Serie A play in Brazil has not started yet, but the Copo has, and that means that there are good games worth wagering on.

Let’s take a look at the odds.

This looks to be a remarkably close matchup between two compelling teams. Fortaleza are the mildest of favorites, with +147 odds.

Slightly trailing them are Ceará, with +176 odds - neither team has a compelling case to be better than the other at this point.

Given that, the match has fairly high odds of a draw, with +183 odds.

While Fortaleza was a bit better than Ceará in last year’s Serie A standings, finishing 9th to Ceará’s 16th, they had fairly comparable goal differentials.

Fortaleza had a goal differential of +1, while Ceará had a goal differential of -5. In the context of soccer, those are relatively similar.

For example, the best team in the league had a +49 goal differential, and the worst was -44. On that scale, there’s not a lot of distance between +1 and -5.

This should be a compelling match from the Copo Do Nordeste, and soccer bettors would be well advised to take note of it.

Happy Betting!