D.C., Dallas take mid-week confidence boost into weekend

Soccer Betting Lines

05/07/2010 - Frisco, TX (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - D.C. United and FC Dallas, the two last place teams in their respective conferences, square off in a Major League Soccer clash on Saturday night.

While both teams have gotten off to slow starts this season, both are also feeling good after earning mid-week victories.

United (1-5-0) got two goals from forward Danny Allsopp to top the Kansas City Wizards 2-1 at RFK Stadium on Wednesday.

"Obviously it feels great," United coach Curt Onalfo said of his team collecting its first win of the season. "It's just one win but it's certainly an important one. What we've dealt with over five weeks in terms of adversity has been very trying and I commend our group for not letting any negativity enter into our group and understanding along the way what it takes to win games in this league. It takes hard work, it takes sacrifice, it takes playing every play like it's the last. We had a very good, hard-fought, workmanlike effort for 90 minutes and it's really encouraging to get the victory."

United rookie Bill Hamid also stepped in goal and played very well in place of veteran Matt Pickens, who has been disappointing so far this season.

"I thought [Hamid] performed extremely well," Onalfo said. "He's 19-years-old and it's his first MLS game. I think he looked a little bit shaky on a couple of plays but that's normal but he's a gamer and that's the kind of performance he put in during preseason and that's the reason why he's our backup. I'm proud of his performance and I thought he had a really solid game."

Dallas (1-1-4) is also coming off its first win of the season after earning draws in four of its first five league fixtures to start the season. A 1-0 result at Houston while playing down a man is as good as it gets for Dallas faithful.

"I think the team is on the right track and I think it was a heck of an effort [at Houston on Wednesday]," FCD coach Schellas Hyndman told mlssoccer.com. "Maybe I'm a stubborn coach, but I look at that as the level of expectation. You expect your players to work hard, you expect your players to be physical and you expect your players to be courageous."

Ugo Ihemelu scored the game winner with a little over 10 minutes to play when he knocked home a Dax McCarty's free kick. The kick was headed by Brek Shea to Ihemelu, who headed it home from close range.

FC Dallas will be without defender Jair Benitez on Saturday because of the red card he received late in the game on Wednesday. Also out are defender Kyle Davies and midfielder Marvin Chavez with injury issues.

OUnited will be without defenders Marc Burch, Dejan Jakovic and Bryan Namoff, and forward Chris Pontius, while defender Julius James is questionable and defenders Juan Manuel Pena, Barry Rice and Clyde Simms are probable, all with injuries.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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