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They have probably the best midfield in the competition and a striker who is a Champions League regular and was African Footballer of the Year for 2007. They are in what is probably the easiest group, and if they make it through to the quarter-final, they will in all probability face a team suffering serious injury problems and perhaps issues of morale. So, why on earth are Mali priced at 25.0 (+2400) to win the Cup of Nations?

The midfield of Mahamadou Diarra, Seydou Keita, and Momo Sissoko may not be the most creative, but it will be hard to penetrate and should provide Mali with a stable platform.

Keita's emergence since his arrival at Barcelona 18 months ago as a more all-round midfielder, rather than being the purely defensive midfielder he appeared at Sevilla, should help to an extent, but the truth is that their game plan will be to negate the opposition and try to work the ball forward to Fredi Kanoute, who remains one of Africa's brightest and most inventive strikers and is 8.6 (+760) third favorite to be the tournament's top scorer. It may not be especially pretty, but Mali's coach Steve Keshi has been effective with the approach before, having inspired Togo to World Cup qualification four years ago.

Midfield resolve will be all-important on Sunday as Mali face the hosts Angola (23.0 (+2200) to win the tournament) in the opening game in front of what is sure to be a passionate 50,000-capacity crowd at the Estadio 11 de Novembro. Their game-plan, surely, will be to frustrate Angola, and then perhaps try to nick a goal on the break, while being aware that a point is probably a good return (the draw is a 3.35 (+235) shot).

And Angola look like they could be easy to frustrate. Their form has declined rapidly since qualifying for the last World Cup, and while it is true that the hosts in Cups of Nations tend to over-perform (Tunisia in 1994 were the last to fail to make it through the group stage), Angola look more vulnerable than most.

Their 63-year-old Portuguese coach Manuel Jose has a justifiable reputation for shrewdness, having won four African Champions Leagues in a little under a decade with the Cairo side Al-Ahly, and he has certainly tightened Angola up defensively. In 10 games since he took over last May, they have won two and drawn seven, only once scoring more than one in a game, and never conceding more than one. The return of Rayo Valladolid's former Manchester United striker Manucho, who had been dropped for disciplinary reasons, may begin to alleviate their problems in front of goal, but the fact that Angola didn't even make the final 20 of African World Cup qualifying suggests a real lack of depth of talent.

After the hosts, Mali face an Algeria side (16.5 (+1550) to win the tournament) who also are better equipped to stop opponents scoring than to score goals themselves, and then the minnows of the tournament Malawi 210.0 (+20900). But more intriguing is what will happen should they top Group A (3.7 (+270)). In the quarter-final, Mali will face the team that finishes as runners-up in Group B (the group featuring Ivory Coast (1.05 (-2000) to make it through), Ghana (1.26 (-385)), Burkina Faso (3.7 (+270)) and Togo (7.2 (+620))).

Should everything go according to the seedings, that would leave Mali to face Ghana (7.4 (+640) to win the tournament), who have lost Stephen Appiah, John Mensah, Laryea Kingston and John Pantsil to injury, while Sulley Muntari has been expelled from the squad for disciplinary reasons. That makes them a far weaker proposition than they were on home soil two years ago, even before you take into account the fact that Michael Essien is carrying a hamstring problem and was so enraged by the decision to omit Muntari that he wrote an open letter to the Ghanaian FA protesting about it.

Whether Mali can get beyond the semi-finals (when they would face Cameroon (6.0 (+500) to win the tournament), assuming everything goes according to seeding) is another issue, but by then there would be ample opportunity to trade out.