Different than the previous post, this is the teams that I really like to see playing (after Holland off course). I must admit that I enjoyed Russian football after there is so much influence from the dutch football, from their coach Guus Hiddink and a little from Dick Advocaat who bring Zenith St. Petersburg won this year UEFA Cup Club Championship.

This game would be very open. Russia display a real ‘Total Football’ against the country who invented it in quarter final stage. They doing it so good until it makes Holland team frustrated, bagged a 3-1 wins in the overtime. Meanwhile, recipes from Spain football is always attacking no matter who is their opponents. Spain culture of football is full of disharmony between the players, especially from the players from Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao which represents the map of Spain of Castille, Catalan and Basque regions. That is facts about Spain. Fortunately, now they seems that they can work together as Spaniards, or at least no conflict are came up to surface while they are there in Euro 2008. That brings a lot of their fans a confidence that they can win this year tournament. If that happen, Luis Aragones, the future Fenerbahce coach, will be the most famous people in Spain and his decisions not to bring some senior players like Raul Gonzales will be the most popular decisions of all.

Unfortunately, Spain culture of football also close to the facts that they are often being the team that close to term of ‘Bad Luck’. They are often meet the team which is the performance are in the rising trends in the tournaments or often the referee decisions against them are so decisive in a match. The most noticeable relations to this match is the constant upward trends of Russia performance after they’ve been beaten 4-1 by the Spaniards in a Group D phase. It will be different Russia now, with the in-form Arshavin and Pavlyuchenko upfront and Yuri Zhirkov in the wing back. Not to mention a long range shooter like Kolodin who makes Van der Saar, Dutch goalkeeper who win Manchester United in UEFA Champions League against Chelsea in a penalty shoot out, struggle.

To make thing’s short, Spain might be win by a slight margin, and maybe this game will go to overtime. But, that if you only look through history and comparing every players from both team. Yes, Spain ahead in technical skill, but to be honest, they lack direction when playing the ball and for me they are only dangerous in an opponent penalty box with their attackers individual skills. The problem is, Russian are younger, more powerful in physics as they are an eastern european teams. That characters are stick no matter what kind of football they are playing now. They would make Spain suffers with pressure starting even in the Spain defense territory. They did it against the more teamwork style team like Holland, why not Spain?

Conclusion, this is a tight game off course, but for asian handicap betting system and for this game I would pick any team that are given handicap advantage (should do it yesterday too..) . This would be great match I would enjoy. We will see either Spain flag or Russia flag fly and march around by the end of the game.

Now, I pick RUSSIA + 1/4 .
Good Luck!