FC Vorskla Poltava vs KuPS

The Ukrainian hosts welcome visitors from Finland at the Oleksiy Butovsky Vorskla Stadium today for the UEFA Conference League qualification second leg. The first leg in Kuopio last week was a 2-2 draw and more or less a justified result. However, for this match I will once again go against the Finnish team playing away from home. Let's take closer look..

First of all KuPS play their home matches on artificial turf which is not something Vorskla Poltava are well adjusted to playing at as in Ukraine the climate is a lot warmer than in Finland  and artificial turf is rare. Today the match is played on grass. This increases the home advantage, that is always big in international club competitions, even further. But most importantly we have to remember that Vorskla Poltava are the better team here by raw class. I of course watched the first leg (and also all of KUPS's Veikkausliiga matches this season) and you could see last week that on average the Ukrainians were a lot more skilled at individual level. Also, the Ukrainian Premier League is a lot more competitive than the Finnish Veikkausliiga that I as Finn of course follow very closely. The tempo in particular in Ukraine is a lot higher than here in Finland. Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kyiv are the best teams in this league and have even qualified for the Champions League many time. Vorskla Poltava are of course not at their level but finished 5th last year in this pretty high-level league. There are some numbers too to back my claim that the hosts are clearly the better team: According to the respected German website Transfermarkt.com that I have mentioned before on my previous analyses the hostst' players' market value is 12.70 million euros where as KuPS players are valued at 4.53 million. While older players who are still very good like Italian European Champion Chiellini don't of course have the market value that would reflect the player's class on the pitch whereas young talents, for example Manchester United's Marcus Rashford have higher market value than their current value on the pitch the teams' total market value is a very useful tool when comparing clubs from different countries.

Today I expect hosts to be very aggressive from to start and force KuPS into a desperate defensive battle and allowing the Finns very few scoring chances. I do not think any of KuPS players pose a particularly big threat to the hosts' defense  Having said that Finnish teams, including KuPS are capable of organized defense and always fight hard and a draw would not be a major upset here but still I see the hosts as 60% faves to win today and recommend my fans to take the hosts -0.5 goals handicap. The hosts have too much offensive skill for KuPS to handle, especially in Ruslan Stepanyuk and Inrahim Kane. The hosts are a strong home team in general and have lost only only one of their latest six matches at home and that was versus a very big team Dymano Kyiv. Today versus KuPS Vorskla Poltava are the better team in every area of the game!