World Cup Betting Tips: Jamie’s Thursday Treble

Our 3-3-3 columnist Jamie Pacheco has already had four winners through the first fortnight of the World Cup, all at 3/1 or longer.

He has three selections for Thursday's matches starting with the Czech Republic and Mexico playing out a low-scoring encounter. Check out his other two selections and why below as he takes us through his World Cup Betting Tips with his Thursday Football Treble...

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For the past two years, I’ve been running the 3-3-3 column.  

Here were the rules regarding how it worked.  

3 - The number of different selections making up the acca. 

3 - The number of different (non-English) European Leagues the selections are taken from every week. 

3 - The minimum odds (3/1) or 4.0 if you prefer, that the acca will come to it every week. 

And these were the column’s results over the past two years, so pretty impressive stuff.   

• 2025-26 season Current P and L: +16.5 pts  
• 2024-25 season’s P and L: + 16.9     
• World Cup P and L: +6.16 

There will be a special edition of the 3-3-3 column during the Group Stages of the World Cup and possibly beyond. Of course, there won’t be matches picked from three different leagues this time round as they’re all from the same competition, but there will be picks from three different matches, and they’ll always come to at least 3/1 across the acca. So we’re keeping things as close as possible to the classic 3-3-3 format.  

RECAP: 2/3 in Tuesday’s action with Egypt winning and England easily getting the six corners we needed them to (they got 9). So it was Portugal who let us down on the day, putting five past Uzbekistan when we could only afford them getting three. Still, that was the biggest priced of the three selections, so in a way, the most likely to let us down.  

But the first of Wednesday’s selections came good with Colombia winning in the early hours, so we may have another winner before the first selection of this column steps into action.   

• Czech Republic v Mexico      
• Thursday, 25 June, 02.00 
• Back Under 2.5 Goals @ 4/5   

For whatever reason, this is one of the hardest games so far for me to find a decent selection in, so let’s talk about the one I do quite like.  

Mexico don’t need to win the game, so they won’t be busting a gut to do so, whereas Czechia do need to win, but not to the extent that they need to go for it from the first whistle.  

Though Czechia have a good BTTS record, Mexico has an excellent one when it comes to clean sheets, having kept one in two games so far at the World Cup and in eight of their last ten. 

And Mexico don’t score many themselves. In the last 10, this is the number of goals they scored: 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 1, 0, 4, 1 and 1.  

So all in all, goals may be in short supply with 1-0 probably the favourite as a correct score and 2-0 and 1-1 very possible, too. If a game doesn’t look to have the potential for goals, then that’s how we have to go about it.   

• South Africa v South Korea           
• Thursday, 25 June, 02.00 
• South Africa Team with Most Bookings Points @ Evens    

South Korea are favourites to win the battle of the Souths by winning the game, but it could well be South Africa winning the battle of the bookings.  

They got two reds and two yellows in their first match and then two yellows in their second, winning that bookings battle, too.  

It’s a shame that Teboho Mokoena is suspended for this one (after a booking in each match) because he would almost be guaranteed one, but there are plenty of others guilty of indiscipline against a Korea side with just three yellows in two games and who are generally a pretty clean team.  

• Ecuador v Germany        
• Thursday, 25 June, 21.00 
• Back Over 0.5 Away (Germany) Goals @ 1/6   

With two big-priced selections already chosen, we don’t need to do anything too ambitious with the third, so we won’t.  

It's hard to know how Germany will approach it. Either as a practice match with little at stake or as the chance to build some momentum after that very ordinary performance where they only just beat the Ivory Coast.  

But here’s what we do know. They’ve scored at least once in 27 of their last 28 games so really should be good for one here. And that’s good enough for us.  

James’s Fun Fact  

France beat Germany 2-0 in the Nations League in June 2025, the only time in their last 28 that Germany didn’t score.