Dinamo Zagreb vs Sheriff: the Croats lost their chances for the Champions League in the first match

Dinamo Zagreb, which had a sensational performance last season, is one step away from flying past the group stage of the Champions League and the big prize. Will the Croats stumble or will the club from Moldova make a breakthrough?

Dinamo Zagreb went through three stages of hell to reach the playoff round. Before that, the Croats defeated Icelandic team Valur (5-2), Cypriot Omonia (3-0) and Polish Legia (2-1). The new season Dinamo started with a defeat agains Slaven (0-2). Then, the team had a winning streak of four matches, scoring three wins. As a result, the Zagreb club is in fourth place, three points behind Hajduk. Given the fact that Dinamo plays on two fronts, the results are not the worst.

Sheriff also made it through three qualifying rounds. The Moldovan club faced the Albanian team Teuta (5-0), Armenian Alashkert (4-1) and Red Star. (2-1). For the sake of qualifying for the group stage, three of the six matches were postponed, increasing the chances of a miracle. One of the key figures of this phenomenon is head coach Yuriy Vernidub, who lifted Luhansk Zorya from its knees, and which defeated Dinamo Zagreb in the first match. Sheriff had 11 players representing 11 different countries.

We believe that Dinamo will have a starting pileup and open the scoring in the first half of the match. Bookmakers give odds of 1.30 for a total over 0.5 goals in the first half. We also think that Sheriff will get fewer corners than its counterpart, although it will often defend itself. Bookmakers offer odds of 1.33 for Sheriff to have under 3.5 corners in the game. The final bet would be both to score - no for 1.909 due to the fact that the game will not be open and there should be few goals scored.