World Cup 2014: Ratings point to Latin America continent advantage

South American support might explain continent advantage

In his last instalment in a series which aims to show the value of ratings to the armchair punter, Jack Houghton, a self-confessed know-nothing when it comes to the beautiful game, thinks Brazil are value to beat Germany, and that a "continent advantage" makes CONMEBOL the bet over UEFA...

Three more recommendations last time, and three more winners, meaning that only England's failure to qualify has dented the 100% record of our armchair fan's ratings.

Without further ado, then, let's have a look at the "true" odds for the semi-finals, to see if further value is to be had:

Brazil - 2.40
Draw - 3.16
Germany - 3.75

Argentina - 2.63
Draw - 2.99
Netherlands - 3.51

At the time of writing, there is very little difference between the "true" odds and what the market is offering in the Argentina and Netherlands game, which suggests that the match is one to watch, rather than to punt on.

In the other semi-final, though, Brazil look to be a little bigger, at 2.8615/8, than they should be. Given that there is also a demonstrable home advantage at World Cups - even if the exact advantage is difficult to quantify - it makes those odds look even more attractive, and I'll be backing Brazil to win in normal time.

By way of demonstrating this, it's worth taking a look at the performance of home teams who have reached the semi-final stage in previous World Cups.

Out of 19 tournaments, the host side has reached the semi finals on 11 occasions. On five occasions they have gone on to win the tournament, being beaten finalists twice. On four occasions they have lost in the semi-final, but when considering that on two of those occasions - Chile in 1962 and South Korea in 2002 - the teams concerned had already significantly outperformed their ratings to reach the last four, the analysis, although crude, points even more strongly in the direction of Brazil having an even greater advantage over Germany than their bare rating suggests.

Some regression analysis carried out by Goldman Sachs provides even more evidence of home advantage. In a lovely piece of analysis, they have looked at the impact of international teams playing on their home continent on the goals they are likely to score. They have found that Latin American teams are especially advantaged by playing in South America, with Argentina and Brazil demonstrating an improvement of nearly 0.2 goals per game when playing close to home.

This perhaps explains why no European team is yet to win a World Cup hosted in South America.

This makes the betting for the Winning Confederation especially interesting. Taking composite ratings for the four semi finalists, it would appear that CONMEBOL should be the slight favourites at around 1.9720/21 to win the tournament, making the 1.875/6 on offer not very attractive. However, factoring in the home continent advantage makes it a value bet, and one that I'll be taking.