Ileana Sanchez
Dailysports's expert
FC Basel 1893
Fiorentina
On May 18, St. Jakob-Park (Basel) will host the second leg of the 1/2 finals of the Europa Conference League, in which Basel will compete with Fiorentina. The battle will start at 21:00 CET.
Basel
The team unconditionally dominated in the Swiss football at the beginning of the century – still, this “golden era” ended in 2017. Nowadays, the 2nd place of the previous season seems to be almost like a breakthrough. Still, those successes at the inner arena could not be developed; on the contrary, “the RotBlau” has completely fallen into the middle of the table. The only way to save the season is connected to the Conference League. Although the Swiss club could have been eliminated there in the qualification – it lost the first matches against Brøndby and CSKA (Sofia) in August, but achieved the success in the return matches. That character helped Basel in the play-offs. They won the battle against Trabzonspor after a 0-1 score in Turkey there, and then continued its way strictly by means of draws in regular time. As a result, Slovan was overcome only in the penalty shoot-out, and Nice was defeated due to a goal in extra time. Speaking about both cases, the return matches were played at the away arenas.
Fiorentina
The club spends its second year under the rule of Italiano. Vincenzo has not given any reason to regret his invitation so far. First, “the Violets” were able to climb to the 7th place in the previous Serie A draw. Nowadays, they have not been able to repeat the higher mentioned result – all the giants have confidently occupied the top third of the Calcio standings. At the same time, “the Violets” were able to do their best in the Coppa Italia, where they managed to reach the final. Although they were also lucky there, because, for instance, the 1/2 stage brought an easy-going opponent from Cremonese. The Italians also came to the play-off rounds of the Conference League in a confident way. Suffice it to say that each of the opponents, Braga, Sivasspor and Lech, conceded 4 goals in each 90 minutes of the first matches of the confrontations. The team opened the score in the battle against Basel at the home arena and was keeping the victorious result for a long time. Still, it not only failed to develop the advantage, but also conceded a couple of goals in return.
The statistics of head-to-head matches
The opponents have already met each other in the Europa League in 2015, however, that happened at the group stage. That confrontation was pretty spectacular: the Swiss team won the match at Stadio Artemio Franchi with a 2-1 score, after which it achieved a 2-2 draw at the home arena.
Predictions
Bookmakers consider the guests to be stronger. Let’s agree and bet on the revenge of the Italians (odd: 1.76).
