Soccer - Copa America - Colombia vs Costa Rica

***SINGLE DIME PLAY***

Because they played in the Gold Cup in a couple of weeks ago, Costa Rica entered this competition without some of their best players like Bryan Ruiz, Marco Ureña or Christian Bolaños. Only 12 players remained with the team from the Gold Cup while the new players are basically all young players without any international experience. We can consider this team as the ‘Costa Rica under23 national team’.

I can see them struggling to have a good defensive coordination through the entire game and they lack the proper creativity on the midfield to make some damage on the front.

On the other side, Colombia is an underrated team going for this tournament. In my opinion, their defense is one of the best units present in this cup. Their back four (Perea, Cristian Zapata, Mario Yepes and Camilo Zuñiga) is pretty solid while the midfield gives them the proper protection. They have been using a diamond configuration on the midfield with 4 players. Apparently they will start with Abel Aguilar, Elkin Soto, Freddy Guarín and Dayro Moreno. The bad news is that this isn’t a good core of players in terms of creativity; however they are a powerful unit that can/will press high on the pitch.

I’ve already mentioned that Costa Rica is an inexperienced team, so we can expect Colombia to press high and force the Costa Ricans to commit errors when they held the ball on the back. This will be the kiss of death for them because Colombia has one of the most deadly strikers in the world in Radamel Falcao, who is a pretty opportunistic striker that can score from anywhere and built a reputation of taking advantage of any chance.

I don’t expect Costa Rica to score any goal. Possibly, betting in a clean sheet for Colombia would be a smart bet as well. I also don’t expect Colombia to play a ‘marvellous football’ as well. They are a pragmatic team, physically powerful and will use these attributes to press high on the field and dominate the game. All my projected game plans points to an easy win for Colombia (with 2-0 being the most likely score) and that’s why I’m taking Colombia AH -1.25 in here.

Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on Colombia AH -1.25 (-1, -1.5) @ -107 / 1.93 on 5 Dimes