Operario VS Sport Recife

Operario welcome Sport Recife for this Brazilian Serie B round 18 battle at Estádio Germano Krüger in Ponta Grossa early Friday morning. This is the second tier of Brazilian football and is of decent level by global standards. Serie A, first tier, is of much better quality though. Many football fans probably think of beautiful, attacking football when they hear the word “Brazil” in this context - some of us still remember the magnificent striker “Original Ronaldo” from about 20 years ago. This league is, however, similarly to many other South American leagues – pretty low-scoring. I expect this clash having an even more lower goal expectancy than on average in this league – and most importantly – lower than the betting market believes, which is a good thing for our bet. Neither team are in good form result-wise. This often leads to lowered self-confidence and makes effective attacking hard – avoiding defeat is something that would probably be okay for both teams here..

Both teams have had problems with offensive structure and creativity lately despite scoring a decent number of goals – more than they should have in terms of expected goals. This is one of the key statistics commonly used by professional football bettors to spot under-valued and over-valued teams and, of course, at the end of the day to find lucrative matches to bet on. The hosts’ top-scorer Paulo Sergio (4 goals) Thales, Neto and Saraiva are among the various players out for the hosts. The betting market has, however, clearly over-reacted to these absences. Sport are Recife without Giovanni and Kayke, which also hurts.. The chance of a cautious and rather boring match is quite high and even 0-0 would not surprise me. The probability of a draw is exceptionally high – 35%. This result would be enough for my fans and me to win yet another bet on this league with the +0.5 goals handicap option on Operario. They should be the favorites here and the chance of winning is the bet is 74%.

Operario currently occupy the 13th points with 19 points to their account. Their goal difference is not great 18:21. However, they have conceded more goals than they should have in terms of expected goals. They have been better on the pitch than the recent results suggest. For example, in their latest match they lost to CRB 2-3 at home. They were indeed very unlucky to allow three goals and not to get at least a point as the visitors recorded just four shots on target. The hosts also had much more scoring attempts, completed passes, attacks and dangerous attacks. The betting market seems to have lost trust in the hosts – they have won just one of most recent matches.. I rate them higher than the bookies, but the main rationale is the fact that the visitors are too high up in the standings – 5th place with 25 points in the bank. Their goal difference of 12:8 reflects that their offense is pretty lame, but defense is very solid. They too have won just one of their most recent five games and two of the 10 latest matches. They did beat Londrina at home 2-0 some four days ago, but it was not an impressive performance! The match was a pretty balanced one despite the hosts being clear favorites according to the betting market – priced around 1.80 to win. They did defend well, and Londrina even failed to record any shots on target. The visitors did, however, have more ball possession, scoring attempts, completed passes and dangerous attacks. Away from home Sport Recife have been poor, especially offensively – and have won just once in their most recent 10 games on the road! By pure class they are, of course, a bit better than Operario.