Sochi hosts Partizan in the first leg of the Europa Conference League qualification semifinals. The match will be played on Thursday, August 5th at Fisht Olympic Stadium (Sochi)
In the first match against Keshla, Sochi easily dealt with their opponents. Vladimir Fedotov's team won 3-0 at home. The away match was more difficult. Sochi took the lead already in the 22nd minute of the match, but Keshla leveled the score 13 minutes later. By the 52nd minute, the score was 2-2. The Azerbaijanis were let down by the desire to win back. The team tried to attack and made mistakes in defense. Sochi took the lead again in the 70th minute and scored one more goal in the 82nd. In the RPL, the Leopards do not look very confident so far. After two rounds, they are on the 6th line of the standings with 1 victory and 1 loss. Sochi lost to Nizhny Novgorod in the first match of the season (1-0). Fedotov's team controlled the ball (58% of possession) and was active in attack (21 shots on goal against 8 for the opponent). But the Leopards did not create a single particularly dangerous chance. In the second round, Sochi beat Akhmat (1-2). Fedotov’s men were leading by two goals until the 85th minute of the game, when the goalkeeper Nikolay Zabolotny unsuccessfully knocked the ball out, and the opponent won back one goal.
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Partizan's winning streak lasts 8 games, and 5 of these matches were official. Like Sochi, the Serbs started from the 2nd qualifying round of the Conference League, where they beat DAK 1904 from Slovakia (1-0 at home and 0-2 away). Beyond that, the Black-and-Whites played 3 games in the home championship and won all of them with a total score of 10-0. Partizan shares the 1st place in the standings with Backa Topola. For Sochi, Partizan is a much stronger opponent than Keshla. The transfer cost of the Serbian club is slightly higher than that of Sochi (30 million euros). In the offseason, the top scorer, winger Takuma Asano, left the team (21 goals in 40 games). But so far Asano's absence has been successfully compensated for by Ricardo Gomez, who spent last season at the Turkish BB Erzurum. Gomez scored 3 goals in 4 matches for the new team.
In order not to lose to such an opponent, Sochi will need to play very carefully in defense. Coach Vladimir Fedotov knows how to organize the defense, but the players need not make individual mistakes. Sochi's game is not yet reliable enough, as the club conceded in 8 of the last 9 games. Most likely, Sochi will try to play as carefully as possible in the match against Partizan. This will help restrain Partizan's attack but will limit the Russian club's offensive impetus. It is likely that either one team will score or the match will end without goals at all.
Prediction for the match: Both teams to score — no
