The World Cup typically will have the same participants play every four years except for a few slight chances when underdogs make it through the qualifying stages. It is still too soon to tell you exactly who will be playing in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa next year, but we can give you a good idea of who should be moving onto the event. You will always see the powerhouse teams from each continent make it through the qualifying round so you should see some of the following teams at the 2010 World Cup.

South America

The South American division is fairly small compared to the others, but it has a lot of excellent soccer teams competing for their spot in the World Cup. There are no guaranteed spots in the South American division yet, but you can expect to see some of the following teams in the 2010 World Cup from this division.

• Brazil
• Chile
• Paraguay

Oceania

The Oceania division is really small and the quality of the teams isn’t great at all which means this division doesn’t even offer a direct spot into the World Cup. Only the first place team in this division moves onto the next round of qualifying where they play one game against another division to see if they get a spot in the World Cup. The team who is moving onto the second round of qualifying in this division is New Zealand.

North America / Central America / Caribbean

This is another small division and not many teams will make it into the World Cup from this division, but you might expect to see one of the two following teams.

• Costa Rica
• United States

Europe

There are lots of groups in the Europe division and you will see lots of them make it into the World Cup in 2010 with some of the following teams definitely moving into the World Cup.

• Denmark
• Greece
• Slovakia
• Germany
• Russia
• Spain
• England
• Serbia
• Italy
• Netherlands

Asia

The Asia division is split up into two groups and certain teams have already qualified for the World Cup in 2010 from this division. There may also be another team in the division move on, but as of now these three teams have qualified already.

• Australia
• Japan
• Korea Republic

Africa

No teams from the Africa division have qualified yet for this World Cup and they actually don’t get to send many teams into the World Cup, but you might expect to see one of the following teams in the World Cup next year.

• Ghana
• Cote d’Ivoire
• Tunisia
• Gabon

There will be other teams in the 2010 World Cup as well, but it is still too early to determine who is going to move on as there is still plenty of qualifying events let to finish. Not all of the teams listed above will move on either, but you can expect to see most of them make it into the 2010 World Cup.

In the above example the odds are really simple to understand and all you need to look at is the sign in front of the actual odds. If the sign is a (+) then the house pays the juice whereas if the sign is a (-) you’ll pay the juice. In the above example if you bet on England to win and wagered $100 you would win $150 if they win. If you picked Brazil to win you would need to bet $110 in order to win $100 and if you picked a draw and the game ended in a draw then you would win $200 on a $100 wager.

If you’re making a wager on certain bets then you might find that the odds are posted differently. For instance, if you’re betting on who you think is going to win the World Cup then you might find the odds posted as followed on the sportsbook.

• England – 5/1
• Brazil – 12/1
• Greece – 50/1

In the above example if you picked England to win the World Cup you’d be paid 5 units for your 1 unit. If you picked Greece to win the World Cup and they managed to pull through and win as an underdog then you would win 50 units on your 1 unit. This means if you bet $100 on Greece to win and they did you would win $5000.

Reading the odds for the World Cup is really simple and you shouldn’t have any problem figuring out how much money you’re going to make on your wager. Some websites have calculators and most sportsbook online will show you how much your wager would make before you actually make the bet so you can always use one of those methods as well to make it simple.

The odds are really important to pay attention to because you don’t just want to bet on a team who is a massive favourite to win. If you bet on a team who has the odds of -1000 then you would only win $10 on every $100 you wagered. Even if the team does win it isn’t worth the risk because the reward is so small. You should always look for valuable underdogs when possible and the way to tell if the team is an underdog is by looking to see if the odds are posted with a (+).

With the futures odds already posted on some online sportsbooks it won’t be long before all of the bets will be open for wagering so make sure you start looking at the odds and finding the value in underrated teams so you’re ready for 2010.