Puskas Akademia VS Guimaraes

Puskas Akademia host Guimaraes for this UEFA Conference League qualification second leg at Pancho Arena in Felcsútin early Friday morning Beijing time. The hosts are a Hungarian team - the visitors come from Portugal. Both countries are countries with a strong football culture. Hungarian people are often pretty enthusiastic about football which we all could see with our own eyes last summer when the atmosphere was mind-blowing when Hungary played at home. Nothing quite similar is on the cards here but Puskas Akademia do have loyal fans to cheer for them.

Liga Portugal is of course better on average than the Hungarian OTP Bank Liga. The difference is very clear when we take a look at the best three teams. Benfica, Porto and Sporting Lisbon are very good teams even by global standards and the first two have done very well in the past two season even in the Champions League! Braga, as I have mentioned before, are the 4th best team in this league and play at a high level. However Vitoria Guimaraes only finished in 6th place last season. They grabbed a total of 48 points and had decent but not great goal difference of 50:41. Moreover, they won just 13 of the 34 matches and did not convince me by their performances in most of their matches away from home. The champions Porto 91 finished the season with 91 points to their account which tells a lot..

Puskas Akademia, on the other hand, played a strong season in their domestic league finishing 3rd after the dominant champions Ferencvarors and Kiskvarda.. I was somewhat positively surprised by their level last season. There is no question about the fact that the visitors are the better team by raw class but and they were clearly the better team in Portugal last week winning 3-0. They fully deserved the win despite having “only” 55% ball possession and three more scoring attempts. However, the betting market has over-reacted to this match. Unless something unexpected happens today the visitors will qualify and that is what matters - no reason to risk injuries or use 100% of the energy! Some rotating from the visitors would not surprise - the best players not playing the full 90 minutes or so. a good team Cluj failed to beat a team from Andorra(!) away from earlier this week in a similar setting - 3-0 lead.. The hosts have a great chance to “save face” here and entertain their fans. The +0.5 goals handicap bet on the hosts has a high chance of winning!