World Cup Qualifying Betting

While the domestic season is already a thing of the past this summer sees plenty of top international action taking place, despite the absence of a major tournament, and there are a host of World Cup 2010 qualifiers to look forward to over the coming week.

Matches from across the continent on Saturday afternoon have varying degrees of importance attached to them as we enter the latter stages of the qualifying campaign but Serbia will be keen to press home their advantage at the top of Group 7 as they look to book their place in South Africa and even at 1.44 need to be backed to get the better of Austria. I have Radomir Antic's side around 1.25 shots and they look like banker material this weekend.

I'm not usually one for getting stuck into teams at cramped odds for the sake of it but every side has their price and the free-scoring Serbs look nailed-on to bag another maximum haul. Currently two points ahead of France, they've won four of five matches so far, only tasting defeat in Paris, and are a formidable outfit on home soil.

Nemanja Vidic's marvellous season for Manchester United in the Premier League has been well documented but Serbia are far from a one man team and with the likes of the giant Nikola Zigic in attack and the talented duo of Dejan Stankovic and Milos Krasic in midfield they certainly have goals in their ranks. Zigic and Krasic were both on target as Serbia ran out comfortable 3-1 winners in Vienna when these two met earlier on in qualification and the travelsick Austrians know that a place at the finals is probably already beyond them.

Success for Serbia in the Austrian capital was followed by an impressive 3-2 win in Bucharest over Romania and while Austria started impressively with a win over France they were then defeated in Lithuania and, more alarmingly, dropped points in the Faroe Islands to sum up their inconsistency.

New coach Dietmar Constantini's witnessed an instant revival with victory in his first game in charge ten weeks ago over the luckless Romanians but his men are much more comfortable in front of their own fans and a trip to Belgrade is unlikely to be greeted with much cheer by his charges at the end of a long season.