Argentina Takes On Columbia In Copa America Opening Round Action

Sports and sports fans have a strange obsession with youth. You’ll often hear that certain sports are a ‘young man’s game’. Only in sports fandom will you hear it said of a 31 year old player that their ‘best years are behind them’. That’s one of the more prevalent bits of conventional wisdom about Argentina as they enter Copa America play.

The soccer betting odds for the Copa America are somewhat strange. Brazil is favored due in large part to their being the host nation. In addition, they’ve had a particularly tough time playing at altitude in recent tournaments so just the fact that they don’t have to deal with the thin air is a boost. Even so, they haven’t won the Copa America since 2007 and yet they’re a +110 favorite. Argentina is the second choice though they’re not getting much respect priced at +350. To be fair, Argentina hasn’t won the Copa America since 1993 but they have been the runner up in four of the last five competitions. They came maddeningly close to winning the last two tournaments but would end up losing in penalty kicks.

Brazil should have no trouble getting the tournament off to a winning start as they host overmatched Bolivia in their opening game. Argentina isn’t so fortunate as they’ve got a tough test against Columbia who are the fourth betting choice at +800. More problematic, this is a bad stylistic matchup for Argentina–since Columbia is well aware that they can’t run and gun with Argentina they instead ‘take the air out of the ball’ and try to prevent them from scoring. In recent meetings, they’ve been extremely effective at doing this. The teams last played in September 2018 and the game ended up in a scoreless draw. Although Columbia is winless in their last 8 games against Argentina a more salient stat could be the total of four goals between the two teams scored in the last five meetings.

Argentina definitely has the superior offensive talent–in fact, they’ve got a double barrelled assault of two of the best players in the world. You’d think that 31 year old Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero were soccer’s version of Methuselah to hear many commentators talk about them. Although the mainstream sports media is almost obsessed with the idea that the two are on the ‘downside of their career’ there’s nothing about the way they’ve played that validates this.

In fact, both Messi and Aguero are coming off of monstrous seasons. Aguero plays for Manchester City in the English Premier League–City might just be the best team in any soccer league in the world. They just wrapped up their second straight Premiership title and all Aguero did was score 21 goals this season. His 118 minutes per goal was the best in the league. Messi made him look like an underachiever to the tune of 36 goals in Spain’s La Liga this season. He was a large part of the reason that Barcelona just ran away with the La Liga title. Statistically, Messi was downright sick this year–his 36 goals were 15 more than the league’s second highest scorer and his goals per minute figure was an almost unbelievable 75 minutes per goal. The second best goals per minute among the top scorers in La Liga was 124 minutes per goal. If this is what ‘over the hill’ is like sign me up.

As good as Messi and Aguero are, however, whatever Columbia has been doing tactically in their recent games against Argentina has been working–while it hasn’t brought any wins they’ve been extremely impressive in shutting down one of the most potent attacks in the sport. Columbia could be happy with another draw and with the way they’ve been able to dictate tempo against Argentina it’s just tough to make a play on the outcome of the game itself. Of course, when two teams have scored a total of four goals in five games the strongest play might just be the most obvious one.

BET ARGENTINA/COLUMBIA UNDER 2, 2.5 -119

Get the latest soccer odds and props from all over the world–follow BetOnline.ag on Twitter!