Australia vs Japan Betting Preview

Group F outsiders Australia and Japan get their respective World Cup campaigns underway when clashing at the Fritz-Walter-Stadion in Kaiserslautern on Monday 12th June and, despite the fact that the Japanese have won the last three matches between these two nations, Australia are favourites.Interestingly, the overall head to head record between Australia and Japan leaves them completely equal. Of their fourteen encounters, both have won five apiece, and four ended all square, while their overall goals for/goals against records when locking horns are almost identical.This match will be fiercely competitive as, if either side is to progress, they will need to win this match, given that Brazil and Croatia lie in wait. Australia, who have one final prep match on June 7, have produced two sterling efforts in their last two warm up matches at the time of writing. A 1-0 win over European Champions Greece was followed by an excellent 1-1 draw with Holland. The feature of these performances in terms of Australia's perspective was their excellent defensive play - Guus Hiddink's charges are not easy to break down.Japan will also be buoyed by solid recent performances, most notably a 2-2 draw against World Cup hosts Germany in their penultimate prep match at the BayArena, a game in which Zico's men led 2-0 at one point in an action-packed first half.Despite Oz boasting players with real attacking flair that those of us in the UK are very familiar with - Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka most notably - Japan have looked the more dangerous side going forward in their recent matches and, although Australia do, as alluded to earlier, boast a sound defence, one wonders how much pressure they will be capable of absorbing on this competitive stage.Indeed, Japan have arguably Asia's most formidable midfield line-up in Hidetoshi Nakata, Shunsuke Nakamura and Shinji Ono, along with Kashima Antlers' set-piece specialist Mitsuo Ogasawara. This quartet more than compensate for the fact that Japan have limited options in terms of out-and-out strikers, and will cause all Australia's defence all sorts of problems.This should be a tight game and, although recent encounters between Australia and Japan have produced a fair amount of goals, they have never crossed swords in a game of this magnitude, so more caution will be applied all round. However, when push comes to shove, I reckon Japan will prevail and, at 19/10 with BlueSq, they make plenty of appeal from a punting perspective in the outright match betting.Verdict - 1pt Japan to beat Australia @ 19/10 (BlueSq)