Royale Union SG take on the visitors Union Berlin in the second leg of UEFA Europa League 1/8-finals. The first leg result: 3-3. The match will be played on Thursday, February 16th at Lotto Park (Anderlecht).
We don't know how they do it, but Royale Union have broken into the top of Belgian football and remains one of the most unnoticed teams in Europe to this day. The modest team from Brussels, owned by the same businessman as Brighton, made it to the first division and almost conquered the highest Belgian league, missing out on the championship only in the last rounds. In the summer, the coach left the team and his assistant, who had no experience coaching serious clubs, took over. However, the results did not worsen, and even more interesting footballers like Bonifacius or Adingra, who tear apart the opponent's defenses, joined the team. They won their group in the Europa League, beating their opponents in this match, which was unexpected. In Berlin, they went ahead three times, but the Germans always managed to come back. Still, the team is considered an outsider in this match. Is this fair?
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Union Berlin also have many fans all over the world, especially in Germany, who sympathize with the team and its organization. For a long time, they were in second place behind Bayern and even had a chance to take the first place after another failure of the Munich team, but "The Iron Ones" couldn't beat the last-place Schalke, and since then, everything has gone wrong. The team played a draw with Cologne 0-0 and with Wolfsburg 1-1, and, most importantly, lost to Bayern's rival 3-0 away, which lowered the team to 4th place and 7 points behind the leader. It seems that something went wrong in the structure of the Iron Ones, but it's not clear what yet. Despite this, they managed to maintain their unbeaten streak at home, but this only suggests that the Belgians can also compete in this match because this season Union had disappointing away matches like 5-0 against Bayer or 4-1 against Freiburg, or the above-mentioned defeat to Bayern.
Union Berlin are an amazing team, but the bookmakers blindly refuse to see the Belgians as favorites, probably because of their still small reputation in world football and inexperience in European competitions. Since November, Saint-Gilloise has lost only one match at home. Union's form is far from the best, and it is not the same club as it was at the beginning of the year when they had a winning streak. It is very possible that their European journey will end soon. I believe in the phenomenon of Union, even in the last match on Sunday, they defeated the league leader Genk and reduced the gap to 5 points.
Prediction for the match: Royale Union not to lose and over 1.5 scored goals.
