The Champions League is back for the penultimate gameweek in the new format of the iconic competition. Each team is about to play their seventh game of the league phase with the final gameweek seeing all 36 teams playing at the same time on the 29th January. What an interesting night, that’ll be. I’ve found a tip that has huge value and looks fantastic on paper. I’m backing Over 2.5 Match Goals at 1.90 in the Atletico Madrid v Bayer Leverkusen game.
Super Simeone
Atletico Madrid have had a great season so far as they sit 2nd in LaLiga two points behind Real Madrid. Whilst they chase their domestic league trophy, Atletico are within touching distance of automatic qualification to the knockout rounds of the Champions League, however so are plenty of other clubs with just three points separating 3rd and 19th place. Every goal is crucial as goal difference will likely be the decider between qualification, play-offs and elimination.
Luckily for Atletico Madrid, goals in the Champions League have been abundant in their matches with all six of their UCL games seeing at least three goals and an average of 4.00 goals per game. They are the tournament’s 4th highest scorers with 14 goals with a shaky record of 10 goals conceded too. Bayer Leverkusen will look to attack Atletico’s weak points with their blistering speed in attack, this is set to be an end to end game.
Trouble Brewing at Bayer Leverkusen?
With reports coming out that Carlo Ancelotti is set to leave Real Madrid at the end of the season, current Leverkusen boss Xabi Alonso is bookies’ favourite to take over. This could cause some unwanted attention for the German club who are sitting pretty in 4th in the Champions League and 2nd in the Bundesliga. They will not like one of the biggest clubs in world football distracting their manager during this mid phase of the season.
Back to our tip, the German side are no strangers to high scoring games. In the Bundesliga this season they are the 2nd highest scorers with 44 goals in 18 matches, 72% of their matches seeing over 2.5 match goals with an average of 3.78 goals a game.
With attacking talent such as Wirtz, Schick, Alvarez and Greizmann, we would be hard pressed to see a low scoring affair here, with odds close to evens that signals a high value bet to me.
