Spain v Italy (£25 free bet)

Yesterday I completed the five £10 bets that I needed to qualify for a £25 free bet, so today I was able to use the free bet on the final quarter final between Spain and Italy. I struggled to find good odds on this match but in the end settled for the Half-Time / Full-Time market with my free bet going on it being a draw at half-time and at the end of 90 minutes. I matched this off with a lay bet at Betfair to ensure that whatever the outcome I made a profit.

The possible outcomes were:

	Betfair	Bookmaker	Total
Draw / Draw	-£69.32	£87.50	£18.18
Not a Draw / Draw	£16.46	Free bet	£16.46

I also had another £10 free bet that I qualified for on the Germany v Portugal game on Thursday that I used to back an Italy win with the following possible outcomes:

	Betfair	Bookmaker	Total
Italy win	-£14.06	£20	£5.94
Draw / Spain win	£5.94	Free bet	£5.94

The first half was a rather boring affair with the Italians playing very defensively to cancel out the Spanish attacking threat. The second half was more of the same, albeit it with a few penalty shouts but it was destined to end nil nil at the end of 90 minutes and secure me a total profit of £24.12.

So yet again extra time was required to settle a quarter final, but another 30 minutes was to make little difference and penalties were to be required. The Spanish finally broke their penalty curse to beat the Italians 4-2 on penalties.