Greta Janssens

Belgian football gave me a strange, useful education: a small league where the gap between sides is thin enough that how a match is paced matters as much as who is in it. I spent years in Brussels watching teams that could be ahead at the break and beaten by full time, and it taught me to think of a match in two halves rather than one result — to ask not just who wins, but when the game actually turns. Half-time/full-time is one of the most misunderstood markets there is, and that's precisely why I like it. My work centres on how sides open matches — the fast starters, the slow burners, the teams that tire after the hour — and how a manager's in-game habits shape the second half through substitutions and shape changes. I pay close attention to fixtures where one side reliably comes from behind, because that pattern is where the real edge in this market hides. A correct outright pick can still be the wrong HT/FT call entirely. Ten years of writing this has made me wary of how a single early red card or a freak opener can rewrite the whole script. So I lean on tempo patterns and squad habits, quote prices I believe are fair, and explain the reasoning step by step rather than pretending I can time the chaos to the minute. — Greta Janssens