Dinamo Batumi VS Slovan Bratislava

Dinamo Bitumo welcome Slovan Bratislava for this UEFA Champions League qualification first round second leg battle at Adjarabet Arena in Batumi. This is a clash between a Georgian team and a Slovakian club. Firstly, we must understand that Slovakia is a much better football country than Georgia. It is true though that Georgian football has been on the rise just recently as their national team have taken many good wins. However, Slovakia even played in the EURO 2020 last summer and most importantly, as this is a club competition, the Slovakian Fortuna Liga is of much better quality than Georgia’s first tier, Crystalbet Erovnuli Liga. The Fortuna Liga is also more balanced – offering Slovan Bratislava more challenging matches between good - or at least decent teams which helps a lot to prepare for tough matches with a lot at stake like here. Their players’ are valued more than twice higher than the hosts’ squad. In Georgia the league is in full swing which, of course is a small favoring factor for the hosts. However, the teams met a week ago in Slovakia - this competitive match will surely help the visitors to be 100% ready mentally and physically here.

I have to admit that the Slovan Bratislava were slightly disappointing in the first leg which - it was a goalless draw. The betting market priced the hosts as around 1.80 favorites to win, which was more or less correct in my opinion. Perhaps even a little too high but not enough to post a pick and place a bet myself. This indicates that Slovan were considered as clearly the better team by pure class. This is indeed the case – despite the fact that I have slightly lowered the visitors power rating that illustrates the teams’ raw class. Batumis’s Kobakhidze was sent out in the 42th minute and as a result the Slovakians were the more dominant side but struggled to create too many scoring chances despite having more scoring attempts, attacks and dangerous attacks. They lacked tempo and offensive creativity. The Georgians defended very hard but did have a few counterattacks too. I simply believe that the market has over-reacted to the first leg and trust the more skilled visitors to improve here. However, as I have written many times the home advantage is massive in international competitions. This makes the match a coin toss (50-50%) in my view and the smart choice is the visitors with the +0.5 goals handicap option. I expect a cautious start to the match and see this match as more low-scoring than the betting market does. The probability of a draw is rather high – 34%.