VPS VS Haka

VPS welcome visitors from Valkeakoski at Lemonsoft Stadion for this Finnish Veikkausliiga Conference League play offs finals first leg. This means that the winner will earn a spot in the UEFA Conference League qualification next season. This would be a very big thing for both teams as neither VPS or Haka have played in UEFA's competitions for a very long time. The stakes are indeed high and I expect both teams to be quite defensive here, avoiding taking too big risks. This is very often the case in the first leg when stakes are high.. A draw would leave everything to play for in the second leg. This result is definitely more probable than the betting market estimates – 33%. I really struggle to understand the odds here. Yesterday the bookies offered smaller odds on VPS but today odds on Haka have been coming down as smart money seems to be piling on the visitors. At the time of writing this most bookies see the match as a coin toss (50-50% without a favorite). I cannot agree with this estimation! I see Haka having a 44% chance of winning. Let's start with some facts from the regular season – before the teams were divided into two groups – Championship group and Relegation group after 22 rounds of play. Haka grabbed 37 points and VPS took 22 points. That is a substantial difference and in my view illustrates the difference in pure class between the teams well. Once again I want to mention that home advantage in Veikkausliiga is smaller than in most European leagues. The weather is already quite cold here in Finland and there will not be a big crowd at Lemonsoft Stadion today. The high stakes lower the home advantage even further as the home fans' presence does not offer any edge in terms of motivation for the hosts. Haka's key players, for example the amazingly good Scottish striker Lee Erwin and defender Luiyi De Lucas are much better than VPS's players and are worth following today! I would expect both guys to play in a better league – or at least for a better team than Haka next season.

Both teams have had a very positive season as whole so far and have surprised me positively even though I did expect them to do better than the betting market or many football analysts here in Finland did. VPS were promoted to Veikkausliiga for this season and all Finnish football fans have probably loved the way they have played – not just defending but actually attacking too. They have, as a result, got a lot of positive coverage in the Finnish media and it seems the odds are affected quite much by this.. Before taking a look at the teams' recent performances I want to highlight that the Championship was of course much better than the Relegation group.. Haka faced for example HJK - a team who qualified for the Europa League group phase - a few weeks ago. HJK were the better team but Haka did fight well and it could easily have been a draw. HJK's defense was, unsurprisingly, super-good in this match but VPS surely cannot stop Haka from creating promising scoring chances here. Haka played a total of five matches in this tough Championship group. VPS also played five games after the regular season but in the Relegation Group and then two play offs matches to reach the final - the opponents were AC Oulu and out-of-form Inter Turku, a team with many internal problems. They beat Oulu away from home through extra time after a balanced match that could have gone either way. This was not an very convincing performance.. They did beat Inter 5-1, again away from home, but Inter were amazingly bad making silly defensive mistakes in this match. Even so, the final score does not reflect the events on the pitch. Inter had 56% ball possession and more attacks and dangerous attacks. VPS did record more shots on goal and scoring attempts though. Both teams have lost just two of their latest ten matches but Haka have definitely impressed me more as a whole. In their most recent four games they, in addition to the narrow loss to HJK Helsinki, took a point from an excellent team Honka in Espoo through a 1-1 draw, shut down KuPS, the team who finished in second place, in Kuopio (0-0) and beat the in-form SJK 2-0 at home.

VPS 在 Lemonsoft 体育场欢迎来自 Valkeakoski 的访客参加芬兰 Veikkausliiga 联盟附加赛决赛第一回合的比赛。这意味着获胜者将获得下赛季欧洲联盟联赛资格的席位。这对两支球队来说都是一件非常大的事情，因为 VPS 和 Haka 都没有参加过欧足联的比赛很长时间了。指数确实很高，我希望两支球队在这里都非常防守，避免冒太大的风险。当赌注很高时，第一回合通常会出现这种情况。平局将使一切都在第二回合中发挥作用。这个结果肯定比博彩市场估计的概率更高——33%。我真的很难理解这里的可能性。昨天博彩公司在 VPS 上提供了较小的赔率，但今天在 Haka 上的赔率一直在下降，因为聪明的钱似乎在涌入游客身上。在撰写本文时，大多数公司将这场比赛视为五五开。我不能同意这一点估计！我认为哈卡有 44% 的获胜机会。让我们从常规赛的一些事实开始——在球队被分成两组之前——22轮比赛后的冠军组和降级组。 Haka 拿下 37 分，VPS 拿下 22 分。这是一个很大的差异，在我看来，这很好地说明了团队之间纯阶级的差异。我想再次提一下，Veikkausliiga 的主场优势比大多数欧洲联赛要小。芬兰这里的天气已经很冷了，今天 Lemonsoft 体育场不会有很多人。高额赌注进一步降低了主场优势，因为主场球迷的存在并没有为东道主提供任何动力。哈卡的主力球员，例如出色的苏格兰前锋李欧文和后卫鲁伊德卢卡斯，比VPS的球员要好得多，今天值得关注！我希望两个人都能在更好的联赛中踢球——或者至少是更好的联赛下赛季球队比哈卡。

到目前为止，两支球队都度过了一个非常积极的赛季，这让我感到非常惊讶，尽管我确实预计他们会比博彩市场或芬兰的许多足球分析师做得更好。 VPS 在本赛季被提升为 Veikkausliiga，所有芬兰足球迷可能都喜欢他们的比赛方式——不仅仅是防守，实际上也是进攻。结果，他们在芬兰媒体上得到了很多积极的报道，似乎赔率受到了很大的影响。在看球队最近的表现之前，我想强调一下，冠军当然是比降级组要好得多.. 哈卡在几周前遇到了 HJK——一支获得欧联杯小组赛资格的球队。 HJK 是更好的球队，但 Haka 打得很好，很容易打平。不出所料，HJK 的防守在这场比赛中非常出色，但 VPS 肯定无法阻止 Haka 创造有前途的在这里得分机会。哈卡在这个艰难的冠军组中总共打了五场比赛。 VPS在常规赛结束后也打了五场比赛，但都是在保级组，然后是两场附加赛进入决赛——对手是AC奥卢和状态不佳的国米图尔库，这支球队内部问题很多。在一场本可以两败俱伤的平衡比赛之后，他们通过加时赛在客场击败了奥卢。这不是一场非常令人信服的表现。他们确实在客场以5-1击败了国米，但国米在这场比赛中犯下愚蠢的防守失误令人惊讶。即便如此，最终得分并不能反映球场上的事件。国际米兰拥有 56% 的控球率和更多的进攻和危险进攻。不过，VPS 确实记录了更多射门和得分尝试。两支球队在最近的十场比赛中只输了两场，但哈卡无疑给我留下了更深刻的印象。在最近的四场比赛中，他们除了以微弱优势输给赫尔辛基 HJK 之外，还取得了通过 1-1 战平埃斯波的优秀球队 Honka 得分，在库奥皮奥 (0-0) 击败了排名第二的球队 KuPS，并在主场以 2-0 击败了状态良好的 SJK。