The thirteenth edition of ‘Round the Sports World in five minutes’ will give you the nuts and bolts you need to know ahead of the start of the NFL season, plus the background and odds before England hosts Andorra in World Cup qualifying. And as ever, we’ll round things off with our Bet of the Week.
NFL Season 2025-26
- Start: Thursday, 4 September
- Venue: USA (plus other countries)
- TV Coverage: Sky Sports NFL/Sky Sports Main Event
- Fun Fact: If you’re watching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Seattle Seahawks in action this year, don’t pinch yourself thinking you’ve gone back in time to the 1970s. Their uniforms this year are ‘retro’ kits from 1975-76 as a way of celebrating their 50th anniversaries as NFL teams.
Betting
Whereas many sports leagues or championships in the world tend to be a two-horse race, such as Formula One or men’s tennis, the same can’t be said for the NFL.
There are currently four teams priced at exactly the same odds of 7.5 with Ladbrokes to win the Super Bowl: the Baltimore Ravens and Buffalo Bills, plus last year’s two Super Bowl finalists, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. The Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers are next at 13.0 each.
In the Name the Finalists market, a repeat of last year’s Super Bowl between the Eagles and the Chiefs is a 13.0 chance.
If you prefer betting on players rather than teams, then the Regular Season MVP market may be worth a look, with Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson both at 6.0, followed by Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes at 6.5.
The opening match of the season on Thursday sees the Eagles play the Dallas Cowboys, with the defending champions the strong 1.25 favourites. On the points spread, you can get 1.9 on the Eagles to overcome a 7-point handicap.
Summary
Each of the 32 teams will play 17 games during the regular season and have one bye week. As is always the case, each team plays the three teams in their own division twice.
This year, NFL fans outside the USA can watch live NFL action at the stadium as well, as long as they live in Sao Paulo, Dublin, London, Berlin or Madrid, with seven regular-season matches played outside the USA, the most ever.
The Ravens and the Bills at the top of the betting may come as a surprise to some, given their failure in recent years to make the Super Bowl, but there are good reasons why the bookies aren’t taking too many chances with them.
Baltimore finished first in the AFC North Division last year and then reached the Divisional Round, before losing 27-25 to the Bills, while Buffalo reached the AFC Championship before they fell short against the Kansas City Chiefs, losing 32-29.
Both teams managed to keep most of their roster from last season, one where the Ravens boasted the best offence in the league in terms of yards gained per game. The Bills, meanwhile, shone last year when it came to defensive turnovers, topping the league stats on that metric, whereas any side with Josh Allen in it at Quarterback will always be dangerous offensively.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City Chiefs are looking to make their third Super Bowl in a row and their fourth title in seven years.
England v Andorra World Cup Qualifying
- Start: Saturday, 6 September at 20:00
- Venue: Villa Park, Birmingham
- TV Coverage: ITV
- Fun Fact: Most top strikers consider that scoring a goal every other game is a pretty good return when playing at the highest level. But those are poor numbers by Harry Kane’s standards. In 65 appearances for Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga, he’s scored exactly 65 goals. At the international level, he’s England’s all-time leading goal scorer with 73 in 107 appearances.
Betting
If you were to check some of the odds ahead of this match with Coral, you may have been forgiven for thinking this was England against an under-19s side, or a side in the second division of French football. Rather than a European international side.
England are just 1.005 to win the match and only 1.9 to win the match by five goals or more. It’s 2.38 that there are six or more goals in the match.
Meanwhile, Betfred make it 1.18 that England win the match without conceding and 10.0 that the hosts win exactly 7-0 on the correct score market.
Odds are already available for the World Cup itself, where Tomas Tuchel’s men are the 7.5 joint-third favourites alongside Brazil, with Spain the 6.0 favourites, followed by France at 7.0.
Summary
England have come mightily close to winning a major trophy twice in the last five years, with back-to-back appearances in the final of the Euros, only to lose to Italy on penalties and 2-1 to Spain last summer. Given that their only big success was the 1966 World Cup on home soil, you can see why England fans are getting frustrated after a 59-year wait.
After a long time in charge, Gareth Southgate resigned after last year’s Euros and is currently taking a break from football, with German Tomas Tuchel taking over.
England really couldn’t have asked for an easier Qualifying group with Andorra, Latvia and Albania all occupying very low positions in the FIFA rankings. The next strongest side in the group after England is Serbia, ranked just 32nd in the world.
England have a perfect record in qualifying so far, winning 2-0 and 3-0 at home to Albania and Latvia respectively and beating Andorra 1-0 away. It’s hard to criticise a side that has scored six goals and not conceded any yet, but if they’re to win the World Cup next summer, you’d think they should be winning matches against this sort of opposition more easily than that. The win, courtesy of a single Harry Kane goal away at Andorra in July, raised a few eyebrows.
With England’s qualification to the World Cup almost guaranteed, these games are more about finding out who fits into Tuchel’s jigsaw puzzle and where. The likes of Morgan Gibbs-White, Eberechi Eze and Tino Livramento should have chances to impress the manager, with all three having a rare opportunity to start for England, and all three will be desperate to make an impact.
Betting Tip of the Week: Back the Kansas City Chiefs to win the Super Bowl @ 7.5 with Ladbrokes
We had another good winner last time out from our Bet of the Week as Benfica v Fenerbahce ended with under 2.5 goals at odds of 2.0; Benfica won 1-0.
We’re going to have to wait a few months till we know the outcome of this bet, but it’s impossible to ignore the claims of the Kansas City Chiefs to win the Super Bowl at odds of 7.5 with Ladbrokes.
They’ve been by far the most consistent side in the NFL over the last few years, and just because they lost last year’s Super Bowl to an excellent Eagles side, that’s certainly not a sign that they’re on the way down. They should come pretty close yet again.
