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The Olympiakos-Fiorentina final could be a brutal match – free tips
The ECL final is in Athens, and we’ve checked out the card and foul markets.
Olympiakos and Fiorentina clash in Greece, with a Portuguese referee, in the final of the Conference League. The favourites are the Viola, but for this article we’ll focus on the cards. Let’s see what the Lusitanian Soares Dias, who will probably have the toughest job of the three finals, can bring us. Let’s take a look at the best tips from the bookmakers.
Underish year for the referee
Although Dias has an average of nearly 7 in the Portuguese league, including 12 with Sporting-Benfica and Porto-Boavista, there are no such figures on the international stage. He has shown just 11 yellow cards in five international cup matches this season, compared to 21 in six meetings last year, so it would be a shame to project Soares’ tough style into Wednesday’s final.
It may come as a surprise, but the Portuguese referee has already blown a match for Olympiakos this season, and a home league game at that. In September, he gave away 6 yellow cards in the league against AEK Athens, 4 of which went to the Piraeus side.
As the stats show, the Greeks have collected one and a half times as many cards so far this season, although they have played two games more. What may be surprising, however, is the number of fouls where Vincenzo Italiano’s boys lead, with 180 minutes less in the legs.
In the semi-finals, it was mainly the Italians who were the hardest hit, with Italiano’s men picking up several cards for time-fouling, although Olympiakos were surprisingly confident in their match against Aston Villa.
Best free picks for the EKL final
There’s no room for subtlety in a final, and if you need to wast the time at the end, either side will do so without remorse. I, on the other hand, see a Florence win as the more likely outcome, so I’m backing both my picks. The Italians will take all the time in the world if they have to, so they could get more yellows and the last one could go to the Viola.
