LONDON: England's inspirational striker is still injured less than two weeks before the World Cup begins and has been ruled out of the opening stages of the tournament.

A man walks past a poster of French soccer players on display at a bus stop in Kuala Lumpur May 24, 2006. [Reuters]

The England coach, on his last assignment before he steps down, has called up a 17-year-old he has never seen play.

His assistant, who guided his club side to a mediocre 14th place in the Premier League with a 7-0 drubbing along the way, has been hailed as the best English manager around and appointed the next national boss.

With this degree of uncertainty, predicting England's fortunes is not easy, and that means there is a lot of money to be made.

Up to one billion pounds ($1.89 billion) is expected to be placed through British bookmakers on the June 9 to July 9 World Cup in Germany, with bets ranging from who will win the Golden Boot, to the number of corners to be taken in a game and what haircut England captain David Beckham will display.

Betting in Britain has always been popular but the 2001 abolition of tax for the gambler and the growth of online betting sites has resulted in an increase in annual turnover from seven billion pounds in 2000 to some 50 billion pounds, analysts say.

The soccer World Cup is the highlight.

"Britain is the world centre for bookmaking and the world's biggest betting exchanges are based in Britain, that's where most of the money on the World Cup will be spent," Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams, a senior gambling adviser to the British government, told Reuters in an interview.

Betting trends

Although the majority of betting in Britain still takes place in high street bookmakers, more people are opting to bet via the Internet, over the telephone or through interactive television.

Access to satellite and cable television carrying live sport also allows people to bet, throughout a game, from their own home.

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