Los Angeles FC VS Austin FC

Los Angeles FC and Austin FC lock horns in this MLS semi-finals battle at Banc of California Stadium early Monday morning Beijing time. This is a pretty good league by global standards and its level has risen a lot during the latest about 10 years! Many promising young players – especially from Southern American countries - as well as older stars who previously played in the top European clubs play in this league. MLS is a pretty high-scoring league on average and often offers entertaining matches for football fans to watch. Most teams aim at playing aggressive, offensive football and the fans love this! The biggest, sharpest bookies with the highest stake limits estimate the goal expectancy here at around 3.20. I disagree and would say 2.70 is the number of expected goals here. Indeed, the stakes are high here in the semi-finals which very often leads to more defensive football. The team who leads by one goal's difference has no reason to entertain their fans that much – possibly risking conceding a goal. Winning is the aim at the stage of the season.This works well for my fans and me as we will go with the visitors with the +1.5 goals handicap option. All we need is the visitors to avoid losing by more than one goal's difference. The chance for this is 66%. Los Angeles have a 57% chance of winning this during the 90 minutes of play.

The hosts are definitely the better team here by raw class and home advantage is also big in MLS. However, both teams are very motivated here so I rate the home advantage as slightly smaller than in a regular season match. LA won the Western Conference with 67 points and a goal difference of 66:38. Austin, on the other hand, also played a very strong season and finished in second place – 11 points behind the hosts and would deserve more respect from the bookies. Their goal difference was also great – 65:49. Indeed, offensively the hosts are only marginally better but their defensive structure as well as defenders' individual skill level are better then those of Austin. In their most recent match, LA beat another team from Los Angeles, LA Galaxy 3-2 after a surprisingly balanced match. They were clear favorites in this match – priced around 1.70 on the betting market to win in regulation time.. I was not too impressed by this performance - their defense was pretty shaky and - quite surprisingly - Galaxy even had 61% ball possession. The hosts would have to improve a lot to win this by more than one goal's difference. Austin managed to beat FC Dallas in the Quarter-Finals 2-1 after a solid performance. They recorded 18 scoring attempts – Dallas's number was nine. They can play even better and I would not be too surprised if they were to win this interesting game!