Betting tips / Jonathan Wilson / 25 June 2012 / Leave a comment Bet Now View Market

As he revels in Euro 2012, Jonathan Wilson continues his quest for good coffee, encounters the best and worst of Ukrainian hospitality, marvels at the comedy stylings of a former international football manager...and also recommends a semi-final bet...

The good news is that Spain's 2-0 win over France on Saturday is that these tips are now £57.60 up on a £10 stake from the start of the tournament so, even if today's bet and the remaining three fail, we're still up. We're better off than in the Cup of Nations when, after a great start, we were saved from an overall loss only by Christopher Katongo and Emmanuel Mayuka, whom we'd backed, being among seven players who shared the top-scorers award.

The bad news is that my cafetiere failed to survive the flight from Warsaw to Donetsk. Saturday had been another exhausting day, getting up at 06:00 to fly from Warsaw to Kyiv and then hanging around in the airport there for five hours, working and drinking preposterously priced coffee as I waited for a delayed flight to Donetsk. Aerosvit, it's fair to say, hasn't covered itself in glory in this tournament.

I finally got to bed at 03:30 and woke up in desperate need of caffeine. I dived in my bag for the box containing the cafetiere and heard immediately the heartrending tinkle of broken glass. Happily, the coffee itself had survived so, using an Arab-style long-handled pot I found in the kitchen plus the filter from the cafetiere, I was able to piece together a contraption that actually produced a very, very good mug of coffee.

The apartment I'm staying in belongs to the grandmother of Oleksandr Sereda, a Ukrainian translator and blogger I met via Twitter. Quite why she's decided to put herself out to accommodate me I have no idea, but I'm hugely grateful. Ukrainians so far - and it's not just me who's found this - seem to split into two groups. The minority looking to rip you off at every turn (which includes hotel owners and taxi drivers) and the vast majority who are unfailingly, at times almost unbelievably, hospitable. The danger is that the former - and one hotel owner openly told a journalist that he didn't care about creating a good impression as he couldn't see any foreigner coming back to Donetsk - sours the good impression created by the latter. Certainly there has been absolutely no sign in Ukraine of the racism or hooliganism prophesied by the Sky and Panorama programmes.

The delay at Boryspil Airport, while frustrating, at least allowed another insight into the comedy stylings of the ostensibly dour former Scotland coach Andy Roxburgh. He's a grandee of the technical committees these days and I remember sitting at a table not far from his at a restaurant in Lisbon eight years ago as he entertained Josef Venglos, Gerard Houllier and the like. And when I say entertained, that's exactly the word. Between main course and dessert, he was on his feet, leaping around, handing out gifts and, from their reactions, giving a hilarious speech. Yesterday I watched him in the café in the departure lounge at Boryspil enacting an anecdote in which one man kneed another in the delicates to guffaws from all around.

He was later approached by three English fans who had looked him up on Wikipedia before approaching him and bewildering him with a series of in-depth questions about his time as a striker from Clydebank and East Stirlingshire. Great anecdotalist and analyst of the game Roxburgh may be, but the possibilities of the IPhone seem not to have become apparent to him.

And so to the bet...

Recommended Betfair Bet
Will anybody ever work out a better way to play against Spain?

Pretty much every opponent they've played in the past four years has sat back and looked to absorb pressure, attempting to hit them on the break. It's worked in friendlies and for Switzerland at the World Cup, but for the most part it just seems to play into their hands, allowing them to control the ball.

Portugal go the same way in the semi, so split the stake on 1-0 @ Betfair odds of (6.4) and 2-0 @ Betfair odds of (9.4) Spain win again.