Manchester City vs Tottenham Hotspurs
After having won the last three encounters, Pep Guardiola must have scratched his head once or twice when he saw 1-0 for Tottenham on the brand new scoreboard last week. Despite his team receiving a penalty from the referee Bjorn Kuijpers. The football professor got some critique after the match for benching Both de Bruyne and Sane, and them bringing them both in the 89th minute. We have to admit, we have a hard time following the professor on this one. 1-0 was the legitimate score after seeing the match, with Tottenham creating a lot of opportunities. City on the other hand didn’t show what we are used from them. An equalizer would not have been deserved.
When we wrap up last week’s match, we have several conclusions that are important for tonight’s prediction:
- Manchester City didn’t get an away goal. If Tottenham manages to score, City has to score at least three times.
- Kane is out. Moura rises.
- The football professor is confident that his squad (City) will reach the semi-finals. But he won’t be too disappointed if they don’t.
- Tottenham won last weekend’s match with 4-0 against Huddersfield Town
- Manchester won 3-1 against Crystal Palace
Odds heavily in favor of Manchester City
Despite things looking quite bright for Tottenham, the odds are still heavily in favor of Manchester City. Apparently, people have more faith of United winning in Camp Nou than Tottenham winning in Manchester. Somewhat rather surprising since Guardiola has proven year in year out to have ‘Champions League nerves’. Not reaching as far in the tournament as the strength of his team should get him.
FC Porto vs Liverpool
This game should have been finished, but Liverpool let Porto live and hope for a miracle. This should also have been played without Salah, that (probably/hopefully unintentionally) almost broke a leg and should have gotten a red card. But should haves and would haves aside; this is still an open game. Although heavily in favour of Liverpool of course, but Porto striker Moussa Marega has shown that he knows his way to the goal in home games. The Liverpool defence is warned.
Porto coach Conceição already started the tactical politics of flattering Liverpool into being careless by calling them ‘on occasions the best team in the world’. At the same time defending his position as coach, should a loss be inevitable. Even though we expect Porto to score, we think that Liverpool will break their spirit after scoring at least one goal. Meaning that Porto has to score four goals to tie, something that seems near impossible with the Liverpool defence.
Liverpool Klopp simply says what is expected of him: “We are in a good moment, we want to play football and we want to fight hard,” he said. “We’ll try to use the result [at Anfield] and go there confident.” What is there to add?
Taking a look at yesterday’s matches
The wonder of Camp Nou didn’t happen, the wonder of Turin did. It’s just that Ajax winning from Juventus wasn’t a miracle at all, the Amsterdam youngsters dominated and showed that they are a real candidate for winning the whole thing. They have gained a lot of admiration from neutral viewers world wide after last night, even more than after Real Madrid. Manchester United will be back stronger next year we are convinced of that. They did a great job coming this far, but after such a rough season it was to much to ask to beat Barcelona in good form. Yesterday’s night was a victory of the Johan Cruyff philosophy, something hopefully more teams will adapt in the future!
