Germany vs. Japan Betting Tips: Best bets for Germany's World Cup opener

Germany take on Japan as they begin their World Cup campaign on Wednesday and Scott Thornton is on hand with his best bets for the match.

The Germans were eliminated in the group stages at the last World Cup. Hansi Flick has since taken charge of the national team and he will be confident of the team making it further in Qatar.

Germany aren’t the formidable side they have been in the past coming into this tournament. They laboured their way to a win over Oman in their warmup match and they have just 2 wins in their last 8 matches. However, they have played against strong opposition in the majority of those matches and they do have a knack of making it to the latter stages. Prior to their exit in 2018, they had reached the last 4 in the last 4 World Cups

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Japan are also a very capable outfit. They have won 6 of their last 10 games and were only narrowly beaten by Brazil in that period. They suffered a disappointing defeat against Canada in their last match. They will need to improve significantly to get anything from this one.

Japan made it to the knockout stages in the last World Cup and were narrowly beaten by Belgium. They face both Germany and Spain in Group E so avoiding defeat in the opener would be a huge boost to their chances.

Germany’s last 10 matches are averaging 39 throws per game. 2 of those matches have seen fewer than 36 throws. Japan’s last 10 matches are averaging 37 throws and just 3 of those matches have seen fewer than 36 throws. 

Both teams should be up for this first game and this will help inflate the amount of throws. The fewest amount of throws in a World Cup match in the opening 2 days was England vs Iran, which finished with 35 throws. I expect this game to be more competitive so 36 looks a good bet here.

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Germany are averaging 2.3 offsides per game in their last 10 matches. They have also been caught offside at least once in all of their last 20 matches. The Germans have a number of players that will look to play on the shoulder of the defence and I expect them to be caught offside at some point here.

Japan’s opponents in their last 10 matches are averaging 1.2 offsides per game. VAR checks could also help as the technology looks for marginal offsides in the build-up to any goal scored.

For the longer odds bet, I’m going to take higher lines of our main bet. The numbers suggest we could see a few German offsides and there is potential for a lot of throws if the game remains close.

I’m also adding Muller to score. Thomas Muller has 10 goals in 16 appearances at the World Cup. This will likely be his final tournament and he will want to add to his tally.