Chivas wants to spark revival against Wizards

Soccer Betting Lines

07/09/2010 - Kansas City, KS (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Chivas USA is winless in seven straight MLS games, but first-year coach Martin Vasquez believes Tuesday's victory over the Houston Dynamo in U.S. Open Cup play could ignite the struggling team.

Vasquez has guided Chivas USA to just three wins through 14 league matches but the California club earned its first-ever win at Houston in the Open Cup, 3-1.

Chivas (3-9-2) has won just one game on the road this year in MLS and is 1-5-1 away from The Home Depot Center but visits the Kansas City Wizards on Saturday with more confidence.

"This win is going to help us to grow and to turn this around in MLS," Vasquez said after the quarterfinal win over Houston.

Chivas USA plays Seattle Sounders FC in the Open Cup semifinals, but that game is more than three weeks away. Chivas has three MLS games in the meantime, and the most important is this week at CommunityAmerica Ballpark in Kansas City.

"If we can continue in this tournament and spark a revival in the league, then I'm all for it," said Michael Lahoud, who scored against Houston.

Chivas did earn a result in its last MLS match against the Philadelphia Union, a 1-1 draw. Although it wasn't a good enough effort to end its winless streak, it did snap a six-game losing streak.

Justin Braun scored the other two goals for Chivas against Houston, and on the heels of the huge win at Robertson Stadium, the struggling side hopes to start a surge off the bottom of the Western Conference table with a win at K.C.

Chivas is 25 points behind the Los Angeles Galaxy, and at least 10 points back of the top four clubs in the Western Conference.

Kansas City (3-7-3) hasn't played much better than Chivas USA. Despite sitting in fifth in the Eastern Conference, K.C. is just one point off the bottom. The Columbus Crew are 16 points away in first.

The Wizards lost their last match, 1-0, to FC Dallas to remain winless on the road. David Ferriera scored on a penalty kick for Dallas. Overall, Kansas City has just one win in its last 11 dating back to the second of two straight wins to open the season on April 10.

K.C. coach Peter Vermes made a tactical adjustment against Dallas that did not work but he switched back to the team's familiar 4-3-3 formation in the second half and the team played well enough to take some confidence from the loss.

"Our adjustment back to the 4-3-3 put a lot of pressure on them," Vermes said, "and we started to put them on their heels."

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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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