Atletico Madrid from Spain host Portuguese Porto at Wanda Metropolitano for this group stage opening match for both teams. I see a pretty big difference here in terms of raw class and will recommend a bet on the hosts who are reigning Spanish Champions. Let's a closer look..

Indeed, Atletico finally managed to topple the giants of Spanish football Real Madrid and Barcelona last season in La Liga. Barcelona were, however, the best team in terms of expected points. Still, I do not want to take anything away from Atletico  - there was a slight lapse in performances in the spring but overall were pretty solid throughout the season and typically for Diego Simeone's team defended extremely well allowing a very low number of goals. The arrival of Luis Suarez helped them a lot offensively and probably mentally too and he scored many super important goals. In the Champions League play offs the Spaniards were defeated by the eventual Champions Chelsea but did not play badly and really did fully challenge Chelsea. In the Spanish La Liga Atletico have played very well  at the start of the season and have won three of their four matches. The one the failed to win was on the 29th of August against Villareal who are a very good team and even defeated Manchester United last May to win the Europa League! In this match Atletico had over scoring attempts whereas the visitors had only a few! An elite-class striker French Antoine Griezmann returned to the club for this season and has played much better than he did in Barcelona. Together with Suarez they are a deadly duo and I expect them to score at least once today which might be enough as their defense is rock-solid! Things look bright for the hosts indeed  - they will surely fight for the Champions League trophy but are of course not top favorites. I want to highlight that La Liga is much more competitive than the Liga Portugal - in my opinion the second best league in the World after English Premier League and Atletico is a lot bigger club than Porto by financial resources and players' total market value. They are over 60% favorites today!

How about Porto then? They did not even won Liga Portugal last season - Sporting Lisbon did. This was surely a disappointment for them and they were not as good as in the previous a couple of seasons.. They did pretty well in Champions League last season though beating Juventus in the play offs. However, Juventus are in serious decline as we can see taking a lot at their performances in Serie A both last season and this season. They finished 4th in Serie A last season. They are not a top European team anymore but are respected too much on the betting market based on their past success. I think Porto's win at home versus Juventus and qualification after a tight second leg in Turin affects the odds here quite much.. Porto simply are not a top European team and had no real chance at all versus Chelsea last spring in the Champions League - Chelsea were a much better team despite the seemingly narrow 2-1 win on aggregate.

To sum up, with the huge home advantage I see the hosts having an excellent chance to win tonight. Atletico -0.5 goals is my pick for my growing fan base.