Euro 2024 Tips on Monday: Back 5/1 best bet in Portugal v Slovenia | OneFootball

Euro 2024

Could it be another frustrating night for Cristiano Ronaldo?

We're halfway through the R16 matches at EURO 2024 and Mark Stinchcombe is here to talk about the best bets...

France v Belgium

Only one team has scored fewer goals than France's two so far this EUROs, which have been an own goal and a penalty, which might go someway to explain their odds of 9/10 to win this match. It feels to me Deschamps doesn't know what his best attack looks like with both Marcus Thuram and Antoine Griezmann benched for the final group game. Kylian Mbappe seems to be shoehorned into a central striking role when arguably both he and the team are at their best when he is deployed from the left. Les Bleus have some questions to answer tonight.

On the other side Belgium haven't been pulling up any trees either with a 1-0 defeat to Slovakia (albeit two very unlucky disallowed goals), followed by a 2-0 win v Romania and a cagey 0-0 draw with Ukraine. They were big favourites to win the group but could only manage a narrow second place finish in a group where all four teams finished on four points for the first time in EUROs history.

With the onus on France as favourites, I think they will more possession and Belgium will be happy to hit them on the counter attack and in transition with the pace of the likes of Lukaku and Doku. This will provide space for Kevin De Bruyne and I love the price of him to score a goal. The Manchester City man has 6 goals in his last 17 caps, including away to Germany, and we can back him at 5/1. To me, he is operating much higher for Belgium than he does for his club side, almost in a two with Lukaku (5/2 anytime) as emphasised by his goal against Romania as he ran through the line of defence to score one-on-one with the goalkeeper. He's averaged 3.3 shots per-game so far compared to the 2.4 per-game in the Premier League, with 1.3 of those coming inside the penalty area to showcase his enthusiasm to get into the box. Back Belgium's De Bruyne!

Portugal v Slovenia

Portugal come into this as 1/3 favourites but I'm not sure it's going to be as easy as that against a stubborn Slovenia side, as England found out, who are unbeaten in Germany so far. Infact Slovenia have only lost two of their last 24 games, including beating a strong Portugal side 2-0 in a friendly as recently as March.

This is a battle between the team who have had the most possession in the tournament so far in Roberto Martinez's men, versus the side with the least, but given Slovenia have only conceded the 12th fewest expected goals, I think there will be periods where the Portuguese will grow frustrated, none more than the main man Cristiano Ronaldo.

Infact he was so irate for not being given a penalty in the final group game with nothing to play for, he successfully talked himself into being booked. And that's the bet I want to take here at a juicy 5/1.

He's been yellow carded in six of his last 16 competitive games outside of Portugal (38%) and we have so much on our side. When he gets fouled (or he thinks he's been fouled) he has the tendency to overreact leading to petulance, he can be prone to committing fouls himself and then given he's often over exuberant celebrations, they can also lead to being carded. He's yet to score at EURO 2024 and has just ONE non-penalty goal in his last 11 matches at Major international tournaments. I'm sure he's feeling the pressure, especially coming up against a goalkeeper of the standard of Jan Oblak who's failed to find a way past in their previous five meetings.

The referee here is Marco Guida who has booked Ronaldo twice in five meetings when he played for Juventus, both for dissent. Viva Carnaldo!

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