With no British interest remaining in the Europa League, question marks perhaps should be raised about the real strength of the Premier league and SPL. This is particularly so when one realises that the last eight in Europe’s secondary football competition comprises three teams from Portugal and two from Holland! Indeed as the quarter final draw has kept the Portuguese teams apart there is a very real possibility of three teams from that country making the semi final.
The favourites to win the competition are FC Porto who were the last team from Portugal to win at European level when they took the Champions League in 2004 under the stewardship of the ‘Special One’ himself, Jose Mourinho and are the 2/1 favourite in the latest Europa League Odds with eight teams remaining. Porto in fact will be returning to Russia to play Spartak Moscow, having just knocking out CSKA Moscow in the last 16 and should certainly make it through to the semi final where they face the possibility of meeting second favourites, Villarreal of Spain or FC Twente of Holland. Meanwhile Benfica will play PSV also of Holland in what will be a repeat of the 1988 European Cup Final. Should they be successful then they face the prospect of meeting fellow countrymen FC Braga, conquerors of Liverpool in the last 16, but they will need to overcome the challenge of a tough looking tie against Dynamo Kiev, who of course put out Manchester City in the last round.
The final of the Europa League will be held at the new 50,000 capacity Aviva Stadium in Dublin, but it is hard to calculate how many fans will actually make the trip to Ireland. Nonetheless, it is a great honour for Ireland who will be hosting their first ever European soccer final.
Porto are certainly justified favourites after defeating CSKA in both legs of their last 16 tie, winning overall by 3 goals to 1. While Villarreal, who certainly know where the goal is hit five in their two legs against Bayer Leverkusen, winning on aggregate 5-3. In strikers Santi Cazoria and Giusseppe Rossi, the Spaniards have the top two goalscorers in the tournament so far, netting eight times each since the competition began for them last September.
Benfica whose pedigree in European competition is well documented, made heavy weather of their last 16 match against PSG, but showed enough doggedness and determination to win through by 3-2 over the two legs. Meanwhile FC Braga surprised everyone by eliminating Liverpool with a 1-0 aggregate win, managing to hold out at Anfield for a 0-0 draw in the second leg. Liverpool were not the only ‘scalps’ taken by Braga who had earlier in the Champions League put out the likes of Celtic and Seville, results which seriously suggest they should be respected at all costs.
FC Twente were also surprise last 16 winners, taking out Russian champions Zenit St Petersburg by a margin of 3-2 over the two legs. FC Twente of course recorded a 3-0 first leg win, which put the Russian team under huge pressure from the start. However, despite the dreadful news that the Zenit goalkeeper’s wife had been killed in a car crash, the Russian team fought manfully to get back into the tie. They did manage to get two of the goals back but it was not enough as the Dutch team held on grimly to survive.
It is a very hard tournament to predict the outcome of but one would be hard pushed to argue that FC Porto, who have the better draw and the more recent European pedigree, with appearances in the later stages of the Champions League, do not have a great chance of justifying the betting and win this competition for the first time since Mourinho guided them to glory in Seville (beating Celtic in the final) in 2003.
No comments:
Post a Comment