Europa League
2012-05-09 - Atletico Madrid vs Athletic Bilbao
A Sports Betting Pick by ROzsolt
Football : Uefa Europa League Final,
Venue: National Arena, Bucharest
Wednesday 9th May – Kickoff time: 21:45 GMT+2
Introduction
Bucharest’s newly built stadium National Arena will host this season’s Europa League final that will be played between the Spanish Liga rivals with the same home strip and similar names.
Whoever wins this game will record Spain’s seventh success in this competition, and the fifith in the last nine editions. Only Italy has more triumphs, nine.
This will be the ninth Uefa Cup and Uefa Europa League final to be contested between sides from the same association, with the most recent being last year’s decider in Dublin, between Porto and Braga.
Atletico Madrid
Atletico de Madrid will be looking to repeat their triumph of 2010 after reaching the final on the back of 11 successive wins since losing 2-0 at Udinese in the group stage.
Atletico’s squad suffered some important changes since their 2010 Europa League triumph and surprisingly there are no players from that period that will be in the starting line-up on Wednesday.
However, Radamel Falcao has some experience in winning the competition, he lifted the cup in Dublin last year when he was playing for Porto, scoring 17 goals in the process. No player has ended up as top scorer in successive editions of this competition before, but Falcao can do it if he scores at least once, he is currently level with Klass-Jan Huntelaar on the top scorers table with ten goals.
Thanks to Falcao’s and Adrian’s excellent form Atletico have score more goals in this season’s competition than any other side, 30, with Atheltic second in this ranking.
Diego Simeone cannot count on Portugues defender Silvio who is out with an injury, while midfielder Tiago is suspended for this match.
Probable Atletico line-up :
Juanfran, Miranda, Godin, Filipe
Suarez, Gabi
Adrian, Diego, Turan
Falcao
Athletic Bilbao
This is Athletic’s first European final since 1977 and they’ve managed to reach this stage of the competition in style, eliminating huge names like Manchester United, Shalke or Sporting Clube de Portugal.
This season Atheltic won their home Liga fixture against Atletico Madird in October (3-0), Fernando Llorente scoring a brace, but a Falcao double kept the points in Madrid in their second match of the season at Vicente Calderon.
Llorente was decisive in Bilbao’s semifinal against Sporting, he scored the third goal with two minutes to go and sent them through to the final. Coach Bielsa hailed his striker’s performance saying that he has never seen him playing better.
Fernando Llorente is expected to lead his team towards another victory, he scored 17 goals in La Liga this season and 7 in the Europa League. Bilbao has plenty of firepower, but Llorente is always more likely to score than his team mates.
Coach Bielsa rested some of his key players in the weekend goalless draw against Getafe and he’ll revert to his best line-up. The only doubt is defender Fernando Amorebieta, but he is likely to recover from a minor calf problem.
Probable Bilbao line-up :
Iraola, Martinez, Amorebieta, Aurtenetxe
De Marcos, Iturraspe, Herrera
Susaeta, Llorente, Muniain
The Betting Verdict
I could analyze stats and all that, but in games like this I find them irrelevant. What’s for sure is that we’ll see two Spanish sides that play a quality football, there is no favorite in this one in my opinion.
There’s plenty of talent and firepower on both sides, so Atletico Madrid and Athletic Bilbao should serve up a final to remember with hopefully lots of goals.
As for betting advices I would say that both teams to score should be a safe pick, there’s been lots of goals in both teams previous fixtures in Europa League and there’s no reason for them to be shy in this one.
The sides are very evenly matched, they know each other well, I can’t rule out extra time in this one. I can’t pick a winner, but if I’d have to than I would take Bilbao to lift the trophy, they are less experienced but showed great enthusiasm so far in the competition and won me over, probably not just me.
The Pick :
Atletico Madrid 2-2 Athletic Bilbao
BEST BETTING TIP :
Take Both teams to score at 1.73 at Bet365Confidence: 8/10
Take Athletic Bilbao to lift the trophy at 2.00 at Bet365
Confidence: 6/10
