Champions League Betting: First leg winners in “super” pole position
Number-cruncher supreme “Magic” Matthew Walton goes through the record books and the stats to tell us how to approach the Champions League second legs…
“As losers in the first leg of their ties the figures suggest, and do so quite strongly, that each of Real Madrid, Arsenal, Fiorentina and Chelsea (all group winners) are under a major threat of elimination.”
Let’s start with a look at the statistics. In the past five years there have been 40 ties played in the R16 of the Champions League.
Of those 40 ties, on 21 occasions the team who won the first leg has gone on to win the tie outright and progress through to the QF’s – which, by the same token, means that 21 times the team who lost the first leg has been eliminated from the competition.
What we also find is a mere four sides, that’s all, who in the past five seasons have lost the first leg but have come back to win the second leg and so win the tie outright.
Finally, regarding the remaining ties, there have been 15 first leg draws in the five tournaments since 2004/05. Of these 15 ties, the side playing at home in the first leg has been victorious just three times whilst the side who played away in the first leg have gone on to qualify on a total of 12 occasions.
That’s the data we have to work from and it tells us (1) win the first leg and a side stands an 84% chance of winning the tie outright (2) lose the first leg and it’s a mere 16% that the club will make it through (3) if there is a draw in the first leg you want to be playing the second leg at home because sides who play away and then home (i.e. the group winners from the earlier stage) go through 80% of the time.
So let’s apply these statistics to the current R16 matches as we head into the second leg matches over the coming fortnight … and it makes for interesting reading.
As losers in the first leg of their ties the figures suggest, and do so quite strongly, that each of Real Madrid, Arsenal, Fiorentina and Chelsea (all group winners) are under a major threat of elimination. They may well be playing at home in the second leg, to supposedly inferior opposition, but the data highlighted above shows that in the last five years only 4 of 25 first leg losers have battled back to win the overall tie. As luck would have it, Chelsea were one of those sides (losing 2-1 in Barcelona in 2005 before winning the return 4-2 at Stamford Bridge) but they still represent no shoo-in for the QF’s on this evidence.
However, in the ‘to qualify’ market Chelsea 1.85, Real Madrid 1.35 and Arsenal 1.70 are all clear favourites to progress whilst only Fiorentina 3.40 against the mighty Bayern Munich are underdogs – and how unlucky were they in the first leg in Bavaria?
All this makes Inter Milan (2.16), Porto (2.4) and especially Lyon (9.2) along with Fiorentina of definite appeal to those of us who follow the formbook and take such statistical pointers seriously when it come to our betting on the exchange.
Regarding the other ties, there were only two seeded teams who won the first leg away from home, Manchester United and Bordeaux, and both are long odds-on to progress at 1.09 and 1.14 respectively. This is quite understandable even though, taking a strict line through the 21/25 first leg winners above, the odds should be nearer 1.19.
Finally, there were just two first leg draws as Stuttgart/Barcelona and CSKA/Seville ended in stalemates. Past results here weigh heavily in favour of the Spanish pair going through but again each of Barcelona 1.09 and Seville 1.30 can hardly be considered as huge value with the ‘true odds’ being around the 1.25 mark.
The data, therefore, highlights a number of very enticing opportunities and in terms of a betting strategy, there are two ways to play it.
Either play the favourites (Manchester United, Bordeaux, Barcelona and Seville) in doubles, trebles or an accumulator – even if the value, on close inspection, is rather poor – or, for potentially massive returns, adopt the same approach for Inter, Porto, Fiorentina and Lyon as their chances of causing upsets simply cannot be dismissed on the basis of the above evidence.
