With the first match of the 2010 South African World Cup kicking off on 11 June 2010, we’re now fast approaching the start of July, which means that the group stages are over, all of the last 16 teams have been decided and some of the matches of the last 16 round have already taken place.

And to say it’s been an eventful World Cup is a massive understatement.

To start with, there was a healthy dosage of expected match results in the group stages, but there was also a whole host of upsets and a selection of score lines that raised a few eyebrows, making live betting not as easy as most would have hoped for.

Take France and Italy, for example. The two teams that dominated the 2006 World Cup and ended up in the final crashed out of this year’s tournament after both finishing last in their groups. With both teams failing to win a match, it was a massive upset for the teams – and that’s without mentioning the problems France encountered as a team, with Nicolas Anelka leaving the tournament half way through the group stage.

Looking at impressive – or unexpected – scores, Portugal dominated their 21 June match against Korea DPR with a 7-0 victory, which was one of the highest scores in a World Cup match ever, whilst Slovakia made sure of Italy’s departure from the tournament with a surprising 3-2 victory.

And then we have Slovenia’s almost guaranteed position of coming second in Group C. With England beating Slovenia 1-0, they still had enough points – 4 – to go through as runners up, assuming that USA didn’t beat Algeria. The USA-Algeria match was 0-0 from kick off through to 90 minutes – until Landon Donovan scored in the first minute of stoppage time, giving them 5 points in total and making them leaders of the group, pushing Slovenia down into third place.

Moving forward from the group stages, the 16 teams to progress were Levitra Professional Uruguay, Korea Republic, USA, Ghana, Netherlands, Slovakia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Germany, England, Paraguay, Japan, Spain and Portugal.

As of 27 June, Uruguay and Brand Viagra Korea Republic have already played, with the latter losing 2-1, whilst USA and Ghana have also played, a match which looked set to go to penalties as both teams had a point a piece – until Ghana scored in extra time and secured their position in the quarterfinals.

Taking a look at the leading goal scorers in the contest, six players – Gonzalo Higuain of Argentina, Asamoah Gyan of Ghana, Robert Vittek of Slovakia, David Villa of Spain, Landon Donovan of USA and Luis Suarez of Uruguay – are all leading the table with 3 goals each. There are then 10 players who’ve all scored 2 goals and a further 67 players who’ve managed to bag themselves a goal each.

Then there are the two players who’ve scored, but for the wrong team – Daniel Agger of Denmark and Park Chu-Young of Korea Republic both scored own goals.

The 2010 World Cup has been of the most eventful and gripping to date and whilst it may have made live betting something of a guess rather than an educated prediction, most people wouldn’t change any of it.

Author Bio: Vickram Chandrer is a world cup betting writer specialising in live betting. You can carry out live betting at VictorChandler.com

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Keywords: live betting, bet in play, in play betting, fifa world cup, world cup 2010