A Numbers Game: a bet on Colombia to reach the quarters at Women’s World Cup

Nothing will be easy for the teams still competing for glory at this year’s Women’s World Cup the rest of the way.

As it turns out, I’ve already experienced that difficulty with my FanDuel Best Bets for the knockout stage to date.

We cashed a traditional parlay for Monday’s games in order to improve to 2-1 with the FanDuel Best Bets in this column for the Round of 16.

However, it was a much bigger sweat than I anticipated.

The co-hosts Australia cruised to a 2-0 win over Denmark to cash the two-leg parlay.

In order to still be alive at that point, I needed England to deliver in penalty kicks versus Nigeria in what was nearly a stunning upset for the African side.

Nigeria had the far better scoring chances in that match and appeared to have the Lionesses where they wanted them after a red card late in regulation reduced England to 10 players.

However, the Lionesses managed to weather the storm in extra time and ultimately prevailed with the win in penalties.

The FanDuel Best Bet cashed for the second time in three days.

Now we’re turning the page to the final pair of Round of 16 games and trying to lock in another winner.

I’m going to take Colombia to advance and the over 0.5 goals in that match at -149 as a Same Game Parlay for my FanDuel Best Bet.

While Jamaica salvaged draws against France and Brazil to reach the knockout stage, Colombia’s attack was clearly underestimated heading into this tournament, and I think they will score the goal they need in regulation to win this match 1-0 at minimum.

In the other match, France is a massive -2500 favourite to advance versus Morocco at FanDuel, making it the most lopsided match-up on paper in the Round of 16.

While I could add a leg or two from that match to make this a Same Game Parlay +, I feel more comfortable keeping my focus on the one match and relying on Colombia to take care of business as the favourite.

Colombia won’t need to run up the score in order to move on, and with so much on the line in this one, I don’t expect there to be much room on the attack for either team.

Basically, I need Colombia to win this match in either regulation or extra time in order to cash the FanDuel Best Bet.

If they go to penalties tied 0-0 then it doesn’t matter if Colombia wins because I won’t have the goal I needed to cash the Same Game Parlay.

While I’m not in love with the price at -149, the result is in line with what I expect for this Round of 16 clash.

I’ll take Colombia to advance and the over 0.5 goals in the match at -149 as a Same Game Parlay for my FanDuel Best Bet in the final wave of Round of 16 games at the Women’s World Cup.