Steven Perez
Dailysports's expert
Roma
Bayer Leverkusen
On May 11, Stadio Olimpico (Rome) will host the first leg of the 1/2 finals of the Europa League, in which Roma will compete with Bayer. The battle will start at 21:00 CET.
Roma
The club pathetically announced the return of Jose Mourinho to Italian football two years ago. “The Special One” brought his new team an international title, but it was only the debut success in the Conference League. Being under the rule of the specialist, it has not achieved the most important thing – “the Wolves” has not returned to the Champions League yet. Nowadays, the Portuguese coach is striving for the task by means of two ways. Speaking about the Serie A, he still hopes to rise to the top 4, although here the hands are spoiled by the return of 15 points to Juventus and the instability of the club. Moreover, a modern segment is characterized by a failure: having lost to Inter, the team has already fallen to the 7th place and there is no time to compensate it. The Europa League also brings some troubles. Nevertheless, the Italian grandee squeezes the result. The battle with Feyenoord in the quarter-final proves the higher mentioned fact – a 0-1 score in Rotterdam was followed by the victory in the return match, first, at the end of the regular battle, and then in extra time.
Bayer
The team achieved a return to the Champions League in the previous season. Still, the new cycle brought a sharp failure – as a result, the triumphant coach, Gerardo Seoane, was fired in the autumn. Xabi Alonso enjoys his first serious chance at the top level, but a lot of time has been spent on “tuning up” the game. That is the reason it will not be possible to finish in the Champions League quartet of the Bundesliga. A 1-2 score in the battle against Koln looks like an evidence of the higher mentioned fact. It remains to try to succeed in the Europa League. There, “the Pharmacists” lost the home match to Monaco and did not win in Leverkusen in the battle with Royale Union Saint-Gilloise. Nevertheless, both the French and the Belgians were overcome. One more confrontation happened between the matches – Stanislav Cherchesov’s Ferencvaros was defeated without any particular problems in March.
The statistics of head-to-head matches
In 2004, the German grandee got 4 points out of 6 possible at the group stage of the Champions League. Still, a dozen years later, in 2015, the Italians repeated the same result (a home victory and an away draw).
Predictions
Bookmakers consider Roma to be a favourite of the following battle, but the guests are motivated as much as possible. Thus, we bet on “total: over 2.0” (odd: 1.61).
