Basel – Vitesse, Europa League Prediction

It has now become clear that Basel will have problems again this season after the last campaign finally failed to become champions and were replaced by Young Boys. Now the struggles for them continue and they recorded a very disappointing elimination in the Champions League qualifiers after a 0-3 defeat by PAOK, losing the first match, too. A very big problem for them is their defense. They conceded at least 2 goals in 8 of their last 10 games. Their only clean sheet at all in the last 11 matches was against Vitesse. This may be due to the majority of changes in thei team during the summer and in addition time is required for the team to get used to the style of the new coach Marcel Koller. In spite of the weak defense, Basel missed to score in only two of their last 27 games which is impressive.

Vitesse began very positive their campaign at the local championship and smashed Groningen by 5-1. Their matches are very high goal scoring and in 15 of the last 16 of them there were at least 3 goals as some of the games had even 4-5-6 goals and the only one they failed to score against was Basel. They were even favorites in the first match against the Swiss. Now their task is difficult, but not impossible. Still, this was a loss literally in the last minute of the game which is very disappointing for them.

When you see the many goals in the games of these two teams, the open football they practice, the attacking style of play and their not so impressive defenses, it’s a mystery how on earth their game finished only 0-1 and the goal was even in the last minute. Such things do not happen often, however, and now Vitesse will have to look for the victory to qualify. This will open them and this time it is quite logical to expect more goals. Our prediction is over 2.5 goals at 1.72 for this match.