Yasmine Green
Dailysports's expert
Estoril
Boavista
On February 9, António Coimbra da Mota Stadium (Estoril) will host the match of the 14th round of the Liga Portugal, in which Estoril will compete with Boavista. The battle will start at 19:00 CET.
Estoril
The team relatively not so long ago rose to the Primeira once again. The previous season resulted in a fairly high, 9th place. Nowadays, the achievements are not so great, but there is no real threat of relegation. To tell the truth, the main game criteria of “the Canaries” have fallen since the middle of the previous autumn. Since October, the club managed to “fly out” of both cup tournaments of Portugal. The same results were typical for the championship – there were 4 defeats and a draw in the match with Portimonense, and only the battle with Casa Pia became victorious – 2-0. Still, the higher mentioned success was followed by new misfires in the matches with Maritimo and Famalicao, and in the previous round the team was defeated by Vitoria Guimaraes with a 0-1 score. However, the 14th position is still held – and there is a kind of safety margin.
Boavista
The club is really memorable because of the beginning of this century – it was able to take the championship title – that happened in 2001. Moreover, “the Chequered ones” got the silver medals twice... But then, there was a scandal with accusations of organizing fixed matches and even a forced transfer to amateurs. Still, the team turned out to return to the pros and even break into the Primeira in a pretty quick way, but the team has not fully recovered yet. Taking into account 3 previous seasons, there were places outside the top 10 of the final standings. Nowadays, Petit’s wards have added in the game, but it is not pretty noticeable – they just entrenched near the equator of the current standings. January brought 7 points in 4 matches – the only defeat was made by the leader, Braga. There was a chance to win in the struggle against Santa Clara, where Sasso made a double, scoring a goal in each of the halves. Nevertheless, the goal in the 86th minute of the game brought the hosts a 2-2 draw.
The statistics of head-to-head matches
Boavista was a little bit stronger in the previous season: a 1-1 draw at the home arena and an away 3-2 success.
Predictions
Bookmakers consider the opponents to be almost equal. Still, Boavista looks more convincing, especially in the previous rounds. Thus, we bet on its victory with “a 0 goal handicap” (odd: 2.08).
