Qarabag VS Nantes

Qarabag and Nantes go head-to-head in this UEFA Europa League group stage round clash at Azersun Arena in Baku early Friday morning Beijing time. This is the second highest of UEFA’s club competitions after Champions League. The hosts are the reigning champions of Azerbaijan. The visitors come from France. A balanced match is on total e cards here, but I think that the bookies have the wrong favorite here! Let’s start by taking a look at some numbers: According to a well-known and respected German website Transfermarkt.com the hosts squad is valued at just 13.48 million euros. The visitors’ players have a total market value of 99.3 million! The market values can of course be misleading, but the bookies and professional football bettors pay more and more attention to these numbers.. The football (players) market is, after all, a global one. However, if two players are equally good and one of them is 21 years old and the other is 31 years old the younger guy, of course, has a much bigger market value. I would say the 13.48 million is more or less a fair number, but Nantes’s are, in my view, stronger on the pitch than the 99.9 million would indicate.

The home advantage is almost always substantial in UEFA’s club competitions and Qarabag have unarguably been strong at home in some games this season in Champions League qualification – especially against Lech Poznan (5-1) and FC Zurich (3-2) but they have not faced an opponent even close to Nantes’s caliber so far. Moreover, they failed to beat Ferencvaros (1-1) – who often struggle on the road and Plzen (0-0) in front of their fans. Plzen made it to the Champions League but do not belong to that level and will probably fail to score any points in this competition, It is also true that Nantes have traditionally not been a great team away from home and this surely affects the odds here - probably too much. Even so, they are clearly better by pure class in all areas of the game, especially by defenders’ individual skill-level and defensive structure and are surely extremely motivated here as they have not played in UEFA’s club competitions’ group stage since participating in Champions League 21 years ago. In my view the visitors have a 41% chance of traveling home with all three points and with the recommended +0.5 goals handicap option, my fans and I have a 71% chance of taking the 8th winner in a row!

Let’s remember that the French Ligue 1 is the fifth-best league in the world and is light-years better than the poor Azerbaijani Premier League where Qarabag do dominate. However, they were not all that convincing in their most recent match against Sabah Baku taking a narrow 4-3 home win in match where they were priced around 1.50 to win on the betting market. They would have to improve, especially defensively to win this one. In the opening round of this competition, they were okay in Freiburg losing 1-2 but the difference in class, especially in players’ individual skill-level could easily be seen. Nantes, on the other hand, lost to Lorient four days ago 2-3 away from home as underdogs according to the bookies. It was a balanced battle as Nantes had 52% ball possession and recorded more attacks and dangerous attacks – Lorient had a little more shots on target as well as scoring attempts and also created more in expected goals 1.22 – 0.97. The hosts will be without the injured Mammadov, Medina and Medvedev. Huseynov’s situations is unclear at the time of writing this preview. Nantes will be missing Traore - Blas and Mostafa Mohamed are questionable.

卡拉巴格和南特在北京时间周五凌晨在巴库的阿泽松竞技场举行的欧联杯小组赛小组赛中正面交锋。这是继欧洲冠军联赛之后欧足联俱乐部比赛的第二高。东道主是阿塞拜疆的卫冕冠军。游客来自法国。平衡的比赛是在总 e 卡上，但我认为博彩公司在这里的最爱是错误的！让我们先来看看一些数字：根据知名且受人尊敬的德国网站 Transfermarkt.com 的数据，东道主队的价值仅为 1348 万欧元。客队球员总市值9930万！市场价值当然会产生误导，但博彩公司和职业足球博彩玩家越来越关注这些数字。足球（球员）市场毕竟是一个全球性的市场。但是，如果两名球员同样出色，其中一名 21 岁，另一名 31 岁，那么年轻的球员当然有很多更大的市场价值。我会说 1348 万或多或少是一个合理的数字，但在我看来，南特在球场上比 9990 万所表明的要强。

在欧足联的俱乐部比赛中，主场优势几乎总是很大，而卡拉巴格在本赛季欧冠资格赛中的一些比赛中无疑在主场表现出色——尤其是对阵莱赫波兹南（5-1）和苏黎世（3-2），但他们没有迄今为止面对的对手甚至接近南特的水准。此外，他们未能击败经常在客场挣扎的费伦茨瓦罗斯（1-1）和在球迷面前的比尔森（0-0）。比尔森进入了冠军联赛，但不属于那个级别，并且可能无法在本次比赛中得分，南特传统上在客场并不是一支伟大的球队也是事实，这肯定会影响这里的赔率 -可能太多了。即便如此，他们在比赛的各个方面都明显优于纯等级，尤其是防守者的个人技术水平和防守结构，他们肯定在这里非常有动力，因为他们自 21 年前参加欧洲冠军联赛以来就没有参加过欧足联俱乐部比赛的小组赛。在我看来，客队有 41% 的机会带着所有三分回家，并且推荐的 +0.5 球让分选项，我和我的球迷有 71% 的机会连续获得第 8 名！

让我们记住，法甲联赛是世界上排名第五的联赛，比卡拉巴格统治的可怜的阿塞拜疆超级联赛要好几光年。然而，在最近一场对阵沙巴巴库的比赛中，他们并没有那么令人信服，他们在主场以 4-3 的微弱优势获胜，他们在投注市场上的赔率约为 1.50。他们必须提高，尤其是在防守上才能赢得这场比赛。本场比赛首轮客场1-2输给弗莱堡还算可以，但级别上的差距，尤其是球员的个人水平很容易拉开差距。见过。另一方面，根据博彩公司的说法，南特四天前在客场以 2-3 的劣势输给了洛里昂。这是一场平衡的战斗，南特拥有 52% 的控球率，并记录了更多的进攻和危险进攻——洛里昂的射门次数和得分尝试次数更多，并且创造了更多的预期进球数，1.22 - 0.97。东道主将没有受伤的马马多夫、梅迪纳和梅德韦杰夫。在撰写此预览时，Huseynov 的情况尚不清楚。南特将缺席特拉奥雷——布拉斯和穆斯塔法穆罕默德值得怀疑。