Istanbul Basaksehir hosts Olympiacos Piraeus in the first leg of the Champions League qualification semifinals. The match will be played on Wednesday, August 7th at Basaksehir Fatih Terim Stadium (Istanbul)
Thanks to silver medals won in the last Turkish championship, Istanbul will take part in the Champions League for the second time in its history. And then its fans are probably worried about the team. In addition to the fact that the opponent is not a gift, the pre-seasonal results were, to put it mildly, not encouraging. Basaksehir played 5 friendly matches and won only 1 of them (against Anif from the Austrian regional league). And then there were 2 losses to Borussia (D) and Ajax. And 2 draws.
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Olympiacos also took only 2nd place in its championship. But it already managed to eliminate Czech Viktoria from the Champions League qualification. And it was done very confidently. The away strategic plan was fulfilled – a goalless draw. And at home, Olympiacos showed the Czechs its skills play and hammered the opponent (4-0). The Greeks also held general preparations for the season successfully. In 8 friendly matches, they did not lose a single one. Although the rivals were pretty decent in some of them. Olympiacos tied with Hamburg and Dynamo Kyiv and won Nottingham Forest.
Olympiacos’s strategy for the match is clear. It will not be different from the game against Viktoria in the Czech Republic. That is the utmost attention in defending their goal, and sorties in counterattacks with not significant forces. And those will be based on the individual actions of the Spanish striker Guerrero and the experience of the Frenchman Valbuena. It is also not worth waiting for the abundance of goals from the Turks. The Greeks do not hesitate to put a “bus” in the away games, and Istanbul is not the club that can crack such “buses”. And it does not have much experience in European tournaments, unlike the visitors who have been playing in the Champions League for 5 years in a row. If someone succeeds in scoring a goal, the lucky one will finally switch to an attentive game at its goal. That is, the fans are unlikely to see more than 2 goals...
Prediction for the match: Under 2.5 goals scored
