Roma – Real Madrid (Champions League). 17-02-2016. Corners preview

Finally, Champions League comes back from winter holiday and first matches of 1/8 round will be played this week. One of the most ambitious football teams-encounters are Roma – Real Madrid. Both capital football clubs have changed coaches during the season and it effects well. But only one team will play in 1/4 round and one of the coaches will confess in the failure. First match of this competition must be hot. And we will try to analyze it and find interesting bet.

Madrid is a leader in this couple and will try to do its best in first match. Royal football club have changed coach and Zinedine Zidane does not give reason to doubt the correctness of his invitation Away match in Rome will be first serious revision for new coach. Pepe and Gareth Bale won’t play in the upcoming match but the team has good players.  Such great players as Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, James Rodriguez will play attacking football and they can cause trouble to the defenders of the opponent. Real Madrid makes a lot of shots on goal rivals, which is the result of the well-prepared attacking play and personal skills of their forwards. Madrid players control the ball in the opponent pinch side and it will be interesting to watch this match. Madrid often create good chances and score goals using short passes to break the encounter’s defense.

Italian club got a set of 4 wins one by one after comeback on coach’s bench Luciano Spalletti and places 4^th place in Serie A. Fiorentina takes 3^rd place with 2 points ahead Roma. If Roma players keep it up, they will have great opportunity to play in Champions League next year. Roma players prefer playing positioning football controlling the ball on encounter’s field side. Roma teammates usually involve in their attacks wings (especially right), create and realize many chances. Concerning to defense, host defenders often let their opponents make chances but it isn’t dramatically. For Rome is really hard to play against top football clubs:  Romans were defeated by Juventus, tie game with Milan and Napoli. Roma was defeated by dominant Spanish team Barcelona in previous group stages. The home match was played better – tie game 1-1. Luciano Spalletti can’t count on Mohamed Salah in the upcoming match. It’s hard to say whether Daniele de Rossi and famous player Francesco Totti will take part in the game.

Let’s look at upcoming match according to bets on corners. Bookies consider that hosts will be favorites and odds on Real Madrid win is 1. 72. And I think that it should be counted.

Roma supervised 32 matches in this season. The team won only 17 times on corners. Recently Roma played against not so strong football clubs and there were 2 defeats on corners in matches against Sampdoria and Sassuolo. If look at home Romans matches, team situation is not going to improve: 16 matches, 8 wins and 6 defeats on corners. Barcelona won the game against Roma with corners twice 7-1 and 11-3 in the Champions League of the group stage.

Madrids won 25 of 31 matches on corners this season.  Royal club supervised 15 matches away and in 13 of them took corners more than their opponents.

Madrids took more corners than encounters in every match they played in CL group stage. Thus, I think that Madrids are favorites in the upcoming match considering corners, if to take to attention match status and previous played games.