Slavia Prague hosts Borussia Dortmund in round 2 of the Champions League group stage. The match will be played on Wednesday, October 2nd at Sinobo Stadium (Prague)
Slavia had just a great first match against Inter: the Czechs forechecked a very powerful team of Conte, causing gigantic problems for Inter, which was a little lucky. I will repeat - the pressure is a trump card of Slavia - you can see it by watching the match attentively and looking at its statistics. Now let's look at possession and actions in thirds of the field: Inter won in possession but not with a huge margin - 55% against 45%. Most of the actions took place in the middle of the field (42%), less - on the third of Inter (32%), even less - on the third of Slavia (25%). These fixtures tell us that Slavia was great at high pressure, which greatly complicated the life of Conte’s team in that match. I also want to note that, in addition to the pressure, Slavia showed good defense in its third of the field: Inter delivered 16 shots per match, while 62% of them were delivered from outside the penalty area. It suggests that Slavia deprived Inter of opportunities to improve the position for the shot, because of which Conte’s team often shot in despair.
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Borussia Dortmund makes a rather contradictory impression at a distance of two seasons: in the last season, the Dortmunders were leaders for a long time, but Bayern beat them deservedly. The team from Munich was far ahead of Borussia in terms of expected points. As for this season, Borussia is still not very good at creating moments in matches against outsiders, and Lucien Favre still can’t place all the leaders of Borussia in the attack, but there was an excellent game in matches against top clubs. Dortmund deservedly beat Bayern in the Super Cup (although it does not mean that Bayern is weaker than Borussia in the entire season), Barcelona simply rebounded in the Champions League first-round match, and Bayer was beaten deservedly either (though the 4:0 was too big). What is the reason for such an elite game in matches against top clubs? It's all about great counterattacks: Borussia created a lot of spiciness in the matches against Bayer, Barcelona, and Bayern, but games with top clubs (at least for now) and matches against teams like Slavia (that are good in defense) are just in different dimensions - Borussia still has problems in matches against weaker teams.
Slavia simply impressed me in the first round of the Champions League - Inter is in great shape now (under the management of one of the best coaches in the world), but Slavia simply outplayed them. I already said how it turned out: a fusion of solid positional defense and elite pressure. In this season, Borussia has already played against a team with excellent pressure (Bayer) and beat it with a 4-0 score. But I have doubts as to whose pressure is better (Slavia’s or Bayer’s), and I’m sure that Slavia is working on deterring counterattacks. Therefore, it seems to me that Slavia will be able to surprise everyone again and please its fans with goals scored.
Prediction for the match: Slavia Prague to score over 1.0 goal
