The Goal Trains – Another Italian football scandal

Along with the transfer market season, summer for football fans has also become synonymous with some scandal or other. This means happy media agencies who manage to fill in their pages and airtime with something more than the usual invented transfer rumours to attract people to read or watch their “news” of the day.

This year we have the Catania match fixing allegations which the investigation has been dubbed as “the goal trains”. Well it is not really an allegation when the main person involved (their own president Pulvirenti)  has admitted that he did pay five opposing clubs €100k each in April, but denied that this influenced the results in any way. Quite a strange statement to make there, as the team was going through a bad period and during those five matches (Varese, Trapani, Latina, Ternana and Livorno) the Sicilian side managed to obtain four wins and one draw, before returning to their former form, which made them finish 15th out of Serie B’s total of 22 teams.

If this was not the case, then that is a strange way to invest half a million Euros. However, if this was the case, it makes you think that maybe, when considering the elevated costs of footballers nowadays, it is probably cheaper to buy matches than star players!

 

Betting the right way

There are various ways in which gamblers, both professional and amateurs, can try to “invest” their hard-earned cash. One can follow specific leagues or sports and have a knowledgeable opinion about possible outcomes, someone else might just study the odds and probabilities of the teams playing on that particular day, or quite simply follow your gut feeling, which means kneeling down and praying for the team or player you have backed to win.

Personally, I’ve tried them all, but my favourite (and most demanding) method I have discovered is that of checking for arbs, with specific bookmakers I hold an account with, when compared with sian Handicaps in popular sites such as Pinnacle or SBObet. In these cases you need patience, a good amount of money deposited with the betting sites you use and possibly some technological help in order to assist you with searching for these arbs.

In future posts I will be explaining what I mean with “technological help”, but for the time being I will just say that with this method you can make anywhere from 5-20% net returns, therefore with a good amount of turnover, you would be beating the bookie in the long run. You will face days where results are killing you, but you must not give up as this is for the long run, which means that there will also be days where results are extremely good.

Just an example: Last week I started keeping track of my betting pattern with this method. I placed the same amount of stake for each bet for a total of 76 bets (this is slow season, therefore during the regular season the amount would be way higher), and in total I made around 8% net profit. This means, if I had placed stakes of €50, I would have made over €300 net profit in a week which did not offer too many matches to take advantage of. Does that sound enticing enough? In that case, stay tuned as I will keep you updated on how this can be achieved and on my net margin in the coming weeks.

 

Hello world!

Welcome to The Penalty Box – A Double Chance Blog where you can read my blog about the world of football and betting, which go perfectly hand-in-hand. I will be discussing all the latest major news and events, particularly the main European Leagues, as well as share my knowledge of the betting world.

I would love to read your comments, so feel free to let me know what you think, as well as discuss your ideas, even if we have conflicting views.

Enjoy the ride and I hope to see many of you register in the coming months!

– DC