Chelsea and Villareal face in the UEFA Super Cup, with the two sides meeting at Windsor Park in Belfast. The Blues won their second UEFA Champions League last season, beating Manchester City in the finals. At the same time, Villarreal lifted the Europa League trophy following an incredible penalty shootout in the finals against Manchester United. The English team is a huge favorite, but Villarreal already showed that they aren’t afraid of rich and powerful rivals.
Preview
Chelsea (-125) wants to win the UEFA Super Cup, as it is one of few trophies that they haven’t captured since Roman Abramovic took over the team from Stamford Bridge. The Blues have one such piece of silverware brought to the trophy room in 1998.
Throughout the summer, Tomas Tuchel didn’t change the roster too much. The biggest addition will be Romelu Lukaku, who is very close to signing a contract with Chelse, but he won’t play on Wednesday night. Apart from that, the Blues have lots of players coming back from loans, but they haven’t been active when it comes to landing new faces.
With Tuchel, every big and important match is a chess match, with the German setting up tough defensive-minded tactics, limiting the number of chances and goals to just a few.
Villarreal (+500) was relatively quiet on the market as well. They acquired rights for Juan Foyth, buying out this contract from Tottenham, Boulaye Dia came from Reims, and Manu Morlanes from Almeria. Overall, Unai Emery has more or less the same team from the previous year.
The Yellow Submarine is a very experienced group of guys, with the majority of the key players being Spanish veterans who played for top teams in La Liga. They like to play slow and dull contests, killing the tempo and trying to exploit rival’s mistakes or tactical weaknesses.
The Europa League winners haven’t been that confident in the preseason period, not winning any of their four friendly games, losing two, and playing two draws.
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At the moment, all Chelsea’s players are available for this match.
On the other side, Samuel Chuwueze and Vincent Iborra aren’t ready for the game due to their respective injuries, while Dani Parejo stands as questionable.
Head to Head Games
There aren’t any records of some official matches between these two sides in the near past.
Prediction
Since this is the battle for the first international trophy of the season, and a general test for the domestic leagues that start next week, both Tuchel and Emery will have a serious approach to Wednesday’s match. As you already saw in the upper part of the preview, they are cautious and conservative coaches, which suggests that it would be a wise choice to bet on low efficiency here. Under 2.5 goals is our pick, and the odds on that are currently at -125. You can also go with both teams not to score; odds are the same. We intentionally didn’t want to propose the full-time result or anything like that because we find it risky.
Pick: Under 2.5 goals
Nikola Velickovic is a sports journalist who loves to write and read on all sports. Nikola contributes both news updates and functions as a sports breaking news writer at WagerBop.
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Email: nikola@wagerbop.com
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