Summer of Soccer best bets: U.S. Women's National Team faces Zambia's goalscoring heroines

Day one of men's Olympic soccer is in the books: day one of women's Olympic soccer looms.

We talked yesterday about the strangeness of men's Olympic soccer; it's a youth tournament featuring U-23 players and therefore it looks quite different from the World Cup or a continental championship like the Copa America. Women's Olympic soccer is different: it's a full senior tournament, and in that sense it is more competitive — and more prestigious — than its male equivalent. Women's soccer is also more balanced across continents, with teams from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania finding their way into FIFA's global top 50. That means that while some of the men's Olympic qualifiers appear to be head-scratchers (Guinea, Paraguay, Uzbekistan) the women's Olympic qualifiers are all juggernauts who competed at last summer's World Cup. There are no easy wins here.

That plays out when you look at the USWNT's group: it's fraught with danger. Zambia, Germany and Australia are three teams who would be expected to reach the knockouts in any group at this tournament. Seeing them all together with the U. S. in Group B is scary. They're all capable of delivering a killer blow, and there's no team they'd like to cut down more than the USWNT.

The USWNT enters this Olympic tournament as a favorite, but certainly not as the favorite. (That'd be Spain, who is widely expected to dance through the field like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.) There are a lot of unknowns about this USWNT, and that makes it ripe for betting. It's the team's first major tournament under celebrated coach Emma Hayes, and its first major tournament without Megan Rapinoe or Alex Morgan holding down the attack. There are plenty of familiar faces — Alyssa Naeher, Naomi Girma, Lindsey Horan, Rose Lavelle, Crystal Dunn and Mallory Swanson are all present and correct — but they're the leaders now, not the followers, and it'll be fascinating to see how they handle that switch.

There are also a few key new faces on the USWNT. Jaedyn Shaw, the 19-year-old phenom from the San Diego Wave, wasn't on last summer's World Cup squad but set the CONCACAF Gold Cup on fire this year in her senior tournament debut. She was the Cup's top scorer and became the first U. S. woman to score in each of her first five games. Shaw is a fearsome player, and this Olympic tournament — against the best in the world, not just the best in North America — will be a key test for her.

This new-look USWNT lineup will kick off its tournament against Zambia, one of Africa's finest teams. Zambian striker Barbra Banda is one of the best players on earth; she plays her club soccer in the U. S. and is the top scorer in the NWSL this season. She's supported by Bay FC's Racheal Kundananji and the two have incredible scoring chemistry. Zambia's Olympic record isn't great — it lost 10-3 to the Netherlands in the opening match of the Tokyo Olympics — but it's a team on the rise and it's full of talent. The USWNT will not take it lightly, and neither should you.

But where are the best bets? We think they're here:

Banda's inevitability. That 10-3 loss from the Tokyo Olympics is striking — not because of the skewed scoreline, but because of just how many goals Zambia managed to score despite being hammered for 90 minutes. Barbra Banda scored all of them. She's a force of nature, a player who cannot be contained, and she will be ready for the USWNT. The odds absolutely do not show this, and backing her as an anytime goalscorer at +600 is practically a no-brainer. If Banda can score while her team concedes 10, she can score against the USWNT in any circumstance.

Want to push this bet a bit further? Back Banda as a scorer of multiple goals at the frankly absurd odds of +25000. This woman is the top scorer in the NWSL, a league that features most of the USWNT players. She's absolutely capable of making it happen.

Zambia not going down without a fight. If we're high on the USWNT's chances but backing Banda to score no matter what, then backing a USWNT win with at least one Zambia goal is a natural bet at +210.

Lots of goals. Both Zambia and the USWNT like to get the ball in the back of the net: there's no two ways about it. We're backing a USWNT win, both teams scoring and at least 2.5 total goals at +200 to support that.

The USWNT takes on Zambia on Thursday, July 25 at 3 p.m. ET.