World Cup Soccer Betting: Iran vs. Bosnia-Herzegovina

The other Group F action on Wednesday will pit Iran against Bosnia-Herzegovina. While Bosnia-Herzegovina has been eliminated from the competition the Iranian team has an outside chance to make it into the next round. In fact, they’ve got a reasonably good chance despite the fact that they haven’t played particularly well. All they need is to beat Bosnia-Herzegovina and hope that Argentina trounces Nigeria to give them the tiebreak edge in goal differential.

The Iranians aren’t a particularly talented team (#43 in the FIFA rankings) but they’re still in position to advance due to the weakness of the Group F field. They’ve yet to score in the World Cup but have allowed only one goal–Lionel Messi’s stoppage time winner that gave Argenina a 1-0 win. They tied Nigeria 0-0 in their opening match of the competition. Their preference is to play a conservative, defensive oriented game but that won’t get the job done here–they’ll need to score some goals and go for the win. They’ve got the better team but it’s never easy to play an unfamiliar style regardless of the sport.

Bosnia played Argentina tough and briefly had the game tied at 1-1 in the second half before Lionel Messi scored the eventual game winner. There’s a good chance that they ‘blew their load’ with the effort in that game since they looked pretty flat against Nigeria and that loss could have broken their spirit as well. Bosnia needed to salvage at least a draw from that contest but they were unable to get on the scoreboard eventually falling 1-0. This is Bosnia’s first trip to the World Cup which makes it more likely that they’ll come with a decent effort in what is essentially a meaningless game for them. There’s little reason to think they’ll ‘phone it in’ just because they’re out of the tournament.

This game will be a more wide open affair than would usually be expected from these two teams. Iran needs goals, Bosnia will be playing loose and we expect both teams to get on the scoreboard. Iran should be able to emerge victorious so we’ll back them and look for this game to go ‘Over’ the total.

BET IRAN PK +175 OVER BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
BET IRAN/BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA OVER 2.5 +100