Love it or hate it, the UEFA Nations League is here to stay, and you may as well get bloody used to it. But, that doesn’t mean our punters can’t make the most of the international action from across the European continent.
That’s exactly what one customer from Todmorden in West Yorkshire did on Sunday night, scoring a whopping £6,932 from just a £2 stake on a ninefold accumulator that really has to be seen to be believed.
Our winner amazingly predicted the correct score of nine of Sunday’s 7.45pm kick-offs in the UEFA Nations League and was laughing all the way to the bank at the end of them, giving our oddsmakers a Tyson Fury-like mauling in the process.
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So, how did it all unfold? Well, let’s get the boring games out of the way first, as our winner cutely called 0-0 draws in both the France v Portugal and Poland v Italy ties. Next on the hitlist was a trio of 0-1 away victories, starting with Hungary’s triumph at the Red Star Stadium.
Norbert Konyves scored in the 20th minute against Serbia (the country of his birth) to secure a valuable away win for Hungary. Pristina was our next port of call as Real Zaragoza’s Haris Vuckic tucked home a first-half winner into the Kosovo net to grab the points for Slovenia and put four on the board for our victor. That soon became five as a Michael Gregoritsch goal helped Austria defeat a battle-weary Northern Ireland in Belfast by the minimum margin.
Athens was calling next for our winner, where a first-half penalty from Anastasios Bakasetas and an early strike in the second period from Petros Mantalos of AEK Athens sealed an easy 2-0 success for Greece over Moldova in the Olympic Stadium.
This is where the calls became a little bolder from our crafty customer, and the seventh leg of the acca required Czech Republic to snatch a 1-2 away win in Haifa. The Czechs did their part, with goals either side of half time and when the prolific Eran Zahavi grabbed a consolation for Israel in the 50th minute, our winner was delighted to see the scoring stop there.
Perhaps the wildest prediction of all on the betslip came from Reykjavik, as Scandinavian rivals Iceland and Denmark went at it. Our punter needed a 0-3 victory for the away side and that’s what transpired as an own goal from Rúnar Már Sigurjónsson, along with a second-half strikes from former Tottenham man Christian Eriksen and Robert Skov of Hoffenheim helped the Danes to a very creditable win. Iceland were probably still celebrating their Euro 2020 qualifying play-off win over Romania last week to be fair to them.
Lastly, all of our customer’s hopes fell on a 1-1 draw between Russia and Turkey at the Lev Yashin Stadium in Moscow. The home side held up their end of the bargain by netting through Anton Miranchuk just before the half-hour mark, and when Kenan Karaman replied for Turkey in the 62nd minute our winner must have been in dreamland.
Believe it or not, that Karaman goal was that last one our punter needed to bring up the bet. However, what followed must have been an agonising 28 minutes-plus wait for the results to come in, as just one further goal in any of them would have made the bet a loser.
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, and we were left counting the cost of another spanking from a cute costumer. The bet beat off odds of 3,465/1 to land the loot and all we can say is “welcome to our Punting Hall of Fame” to our winner.
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