Olympiakos vs Krasnodar for the Champions League qualification match on Wednesday at Karaiskakis Stadium.
Olympiakos
Olympiakos team will start this round of the Champions League group stage playoffs to play in front of their fans, enters this match to play another pre-qualifying round of the competition.
The third time they have done so, having already eliminated the Plzen team (which won by 4-0 aggregate) and the Istanbul Basaksehir team (3-0 win in both matches), having now what will probably be the most complicated challenge so far, facing a Russian team that has already eliminated the Portuguese runner-up in the previous round.
The team comes from a good phase of results, with 3 wins in a row.
Krasnodar
As for the Krasnodar team, they are getting closer and closer to being in this most essential football club competition in Europe, and the team’s achievements so far and its evolution since its founding in 2008 are to be admired.
Whereas the most recent and one of the most remarkable achievements in recent years is, of course, the extraordinary victory against the Portuguese runners-up in the previous round.
With the Russian team managing to reverse a somewhat complicated disadvantage after losing in their ground, to win on difficult terrain such as Estádio do Dragão, beating FC Porto 3-2 in a brilliant game by the visitors, who knew how to exploit their opponent’s defensive mistakes.
Prediction
Considering what tend to be two teams very solid in the defensive sense of the game, with a lot of positional discipline and tactical rigidity, adding to this a very important round that gives access to over 40 million euros, I can only see here a very balanced game and with few goals scored.