Champions League Betting: Fiorentina v Sporting & Olympiacos v Sheriff

Champions League / Tobias Gourlay / 25 August 2009 / Leave a Comment

Gilardino will be looking to score plenty of goals this season in Serie A and the Champions League to ensure he's included in Italy's squad for the 2010 World Cup.

"There probably won't be a new Sheriff in town for the group stages, then, but Temuri Ketsbaia, a cult figure of yesteryear on Tyneside and now coach of Olympiacos, will be more wary than most of an embarrassing defeat"

Tobias Gourlay reminds you about a couple of Champions League qualifiers that might otherwise have slipped below your radar.

After a 2-2 first-leg draw in Portugal, Fiorentina will be confident of doing enough at their Artemio Franchi stadium on Wednesday evening to book a place in the group stages of the Champions League at the expense of Sporting Lisbon, who have gone that far in each of the last three seasons.

Sporting have travelled to Italy on 11 previous occasions and never left with a win. Nine of those games were lost. Their recent history includes defeats to Internazionale and Udinese in the third qualifying round of the Champions League. Since the turn of the millennium the Lions are W3-D3-L10 on the road in Europe's premier club competition (TM). Seven of those 16 games produced Under 2.5 Goals, but Sporting have scored themselves in 8/8 since the start of the 2007/08 season. At the time of writing, you can say no to a Fiorentina Clean Sheet at [1.57].

La Viola began their domestic campaign on Sunday with a 1-1 draw in Bologna. In Europe last season, they beat Slavia Prague in qualifying but failed to win any of their three group-stage matches at the Artemio Franchi. Three of the four games went Under 2.5 Goals, which is a [1.89] shot for this match.

There is a more exciting bet to be made in the tie that sees Olympiacos take a 2-0 lead into their second leg with FC Sheriff of Moldova. The Greek champions have won the last 12 UEFA ties in which they have taken a lead from the first leg and are [1.01] favourites to make it to the Champions League proper. In the previous round of this season's competition, they won 2-0 away to Slovan Bratislava and repeated the scoreline in the home match.

This is the first season in nine in which Sheriff, who won the Moldovan title each time to enter the competition, have not been knocked out of the Champions League in the second qualifying round. Two of those exits involved a failure to recover from a first-leg deficit. All told, Sheriff are W4-D4-L10 on the road in this competition. Thirteen of those games involved Under 2.5 Goals (seven of the 10 losses), which is available at [2.28] for this match. Olympiacos are [1.25] to add an eleventh defeat to Sheriff's tally.

There probably won't be a new Sheriff in town for the group stages, then, but Temuri Ketsbaia, a cult figure of yesteryear on Tyneside and now coach of Olympiacos, will be more wary than most of an embarrassing defeat: he was in charge of Anorthosis Famagusta when they knocked out the Greek giants last season.

Since 2004/05 the Legend have a W7-D4-L4 Champions League record at their Karaiskakis home. The calibre of opposition has usually been much higher than this, but they have managed clean sheets in all of the five most recent of those games. [1.73] looks a good price for another home shutout on Wednesday, bearing in mind that Sheriff have scored in only three of their last nine Champions League away qualifiers.

Best Bet: Back Olympiacos Clean Sheet at [1.73] v Sheriff