Barcelona-Chelsea: A Truly Epic Gubbing!

Hands up if you saw that one coming and had money on it?

The match between Barcelona & Chelsea was the type of match that many punters would have ended up losing their shirt on as the “impossible” happened and a ten man Chelsea came back from 2-0 down to level the match at 2-2 and qualify for the semi-finals.

This was not a football match, it was more like a movie!

Overreactions!

There was a huge market over reaction when Barcelona went 2-0 up.  This was just moments after John Terry was sent off and with Chelsea down to 10 men almost every punter in the world was thinking that this was going to end in a drubbing.

In the immediate aftermath of the second goal, Barcelona traded as low as 1.01 for £350k+ and the draw price touched 1000 on Betfair for £33. That is a truly epic gubbing if you were on the wrong end of some of those prices. As you can see from the screen shot below, there was MILLIONS matched from 1.05 and below! Much of that money is the bookmakers hedging bets but trading is a zero sum game and there is some people out there truly backing at these really low odds.

If you are backing at those prices you are suggesting the outcome is a near certainty and can you really say anything is a certainty in football with 45 minutes of football left to play?

Keeping your head while everyone around you is losing theirs is a good quality when you are a trader and as hard as it might feel at the time, you should always try and go against the hype if you want the value.

There isn’t much more that I can say about the match itself that you wont have already read or heard by now. It was truly amazing stuff and I do often say that there is not much in football that can happen that will ever surprise me but that was pretty eye brow raising to say the least. It was a match that had everything although I don’t think I enjoyed it quite as much as Gary Neville sounded like he did!

To sum up just how much the markets favoured Barcelona to qualify last night, it took until the 81st minute for Chelsea to finally trade at odds-on to qualify which was the first time that happened over the whole 2 legs. To say the punters love backing Barcelona is an understatement!

The Trends Hold True…

I did highlight yesterday that teams have previously struggled to turn around a deficit at this stage of the tournament and it showed once again. Only 3 teams have managed to turn around a deficit at this stage in the past decade and this is still true which makes you wonder how Real Madrid will get on tonight.

Another fact that was highlighted yesterday is that no team has ever successfully defended the Champions League and that record will remain at least for another year.

Barcelona were 2.40 favourites to win the Champions League and had traded as low as 1.80 for the title. They hit 1.80 just after they beat AC Milan however the market doubt began to set in after the first leg defeat against Chelsea and then the defeat in El Clasico impacted the price also which saw it drift to 2.40 by kick off last night and ended up at 1000 by 9.45pm!

The new favourites for the Champions League are Real Madrid who moved into 2.40 to win it.  They have a job to do first and Bayern Munich will not be pushovers tonight.

Anyway, as I said on March 19th…

If Real Madrid have just clinched La Liga would you want to bet against Mourinho pulling off yet another Champions League & Domestic League double?

If Chelsea are to win the Champions League this season I think they will have to hope they face Bayern and not a reunion with Mourinho who could come back to haunt them once again. It is all ifs and buts for now and I guess we will have a much clearer picture by tomorrow morning 😉