Luxembourg VS Portugal

Luxembourg host Portugal for this EURO 2024 qualification Group J second round battle at Stade de Luxembourg early Monday morning Beijing time. The other teams in this group are Bosnia & Herzegovina, Iceland, Slovakia and Lichtenstein. Portugal, who are gigantic favorites to win the group. However, the team that finishes in second place also earns a ticket to the tournament in the summer next year. I see Bosnia as solid favorites to take second place. Slovakia are the third-best team in the group based on my sophisticated in-depth analysis. Today's hosts or moderately worse than Iceland by pure class and them qualifying for the EURO 2024 would certainly be a big surprise but still not as huge as for example Saudi Arabia beating the eventual champions, Argentina, in the World Cup in Qatar.. The hosts FIFA ranking is 92th and this is unarguably too low – I have them in the 79th place in my world power rating that reflects the teams' pure class with the best possible lineup. Portugal, on the other hand, are in the 9th place which is slightly too high.. I have them in the 10th place in the power rating. The visitors comfortably beat Liechtenstein in the opening round 4-0 at home. However, I do not give this match too much emphasis as the difference between the teams was massive. Some bookies did not even offer odds at all on Portugal to win – some offered odds of 1.005-1.01. They, of course, recorded much more in expected goals (xG) – 3.87 to be precise - than the visitors whose number was just 0.05. I was not fully convinced by Portugal's offensive performance.. The home crowd was asking for more goals but it seemed the hosts did not want to waste energy and/or risk injuries to score more goals. The same might be true here as there will not be many Portuguese fans at the stadium and almost all of the visitors' players have very important club matches coming up this spring

The hosts will surely fight hard even if they are trailing by a few goals.. They have a close to 70% chance of avoiding losing by more than two goals' difference. There is long-term data suggesting that betting and a heavy favorite with big handicaps is usually a very bad idea.. Before the Liechtenstein game Portugal were very disappointing and lost to Morocco in a World Cup Play Offs game 0-1. They failed to record too much in expected goals despite having big ball possession %. Slovakia fought well in their most recent match in Slovakia taking a 0-0 draw as very clear favorites accordint to the betting market. The hosts were priced around 1.70 to take all three points. Yes, Slovakia did record more in xG but not by a wide margin. Moreover, Luxembourg had 52% ball possession and recorded more total passes and completed passes. They have not lost any of their latest six games despite facing dangerous opponents like Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey. Against Turkey they were priced around 12.00 to win - yet another example of the betting market undervaluing them! They have a great coach, awesome team spirit and a great defensive structure. They have raised their level significantly during the past 3-4 years despite not having any stars in the team. Furthermore, Luxembourg have not lost any of their most recent 11 games by more than two goals' margin!