{"id":5902,"date":"2019-07-22T13:49:30","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T13:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/?p=5902"},"modified":"2019-07-23T02:33:43","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T02:33:43","slug":"psv-eindhoven-hosts-fc-basel-in-champions-league-qualification-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/sports\/psv-eindhoven-hosts-fc-basel-in-champions-league-qualification-play\/","title":{"rendered":"PSV Eindhoven Hosts FC Basel In Champions League Qualification Play"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Soccer’s short but busy off season is at an end and the world’s ‘football’ leagues are returning to life. Within the next few weeks all of the major international leagues including the English Premier League and Germany’s Bundesliga will begin play and once that happens it’ll be wall to wall soccer action until next Summer. From a soccer betting<\/a> perspective, the most significant game annually is the Champions League Finals held in late May\/early June. Liverpool is the defending title holder but there are plenty of challengers looking to claim their crown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For teams that don’t qualify directly for Champions League play the alternate and more arduous road into the competition is through the qualification process. The formula that UEFA uses to seed qualifiers along with the format itself is a complex and somewhat unwieldy process. The important components–53 teams compete for one of six spots that entitle them to join the 26 directly qualified teams in the Group Stage of the Champions League. In this matchup, Swiss side FC Basel travels to Phillips Stadium in the Netherlands to take on Dutch Eredivisie side PSV Eindhoven in the first leg of their second qualifying round matchup. The return leg will be played at FC Basel’s home stadium, St. Jakob-Park. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An important component of handicapping international team competition in the qualifying stage is understanding the qualitative hierarchy of the various leagues. There’s not a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to do this and you’ll find plenty of resources online that attempt to rank teams and leagues statistically. Of course, the statistical framework to do so often reflects the personal biases of it’s creator meaning that even purportedly quantitative assessments are extremely subjective. At this point in time, most soccer experts suggest that the two best leagues in the world are Spain’s La Liga and the English Premier League though not necessarily in that order. Personally, I favor the EPL–you can make a compelling case that Liverpool and Manchester City were the best two teams in the world last year and Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur are all arguably in the top ten. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally speaking, the Swiss Super League is a second and maybe even third tier European League. The Dutch Eredivisie, on the other hand, is a very competitive league. With Ajax Amsterdam reaching the Champions League semifinals last year and Matthijs de Ligt’s status as the most sought after player in the recent transfer window it’s tough to say that the Eredivisie is ‘underrated’. In fact, it’s an almost annual ritual for the Eredivisie to have their best players signed away by one of the elite leagues. PSV Eindhoven finished second in the Eredivisie last year just 3 points back of Ajax–being neck and neck with a team that came maddeningly close to the Champions League Finals is clearly no joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FC Basel also took second place in their league but the Swiss Super League is an extremely stratified competition. Basel took down eight straight Super League Championships between 2010 and 2017. They also won the 2008 title giving them 9 in 10 years but in the past two seasons they’ve watched Young Boys take over league supremacy. Last year, Basel finished a whopping 20 points behind Young Boys. In turn, Basel finished 25 points ahead of third place FC Lugano. Clearly, the league doesn’t have the depth of talent to be considered among Europe’s elite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Basel hasn’t fared well in European competition of late they’re by no means a walkover. They have won 7 of their last 8 away games in all competitions though most was in Super League competition. This is the first time that PSV Eindhoven and Basel have met in a competitive match and although the Eredivisie side looks to be the better of the two teams it’s essential for them to go into the second leg in Switzerland with a solid margin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The handicap line on the home side looks very reasonable and with only one of Eindhoven’s last six home fixtures seeing fewer than 3 goals scored we’ll go ‘Over’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BET PSV EINDHOVEN -1 -113 OVER FC BASEL
BET PSV EINDHOVEN\/FC BASEL OVER 2.5 -125<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get the latest soccer odds and props from all over the world–follow BetOnline.ag on Twitter<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soccer’s short but busy off season is at an end and the world’s ‘football’ leagues are returning to life. Within…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":5903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5904,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5902\/revisions\/5904"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}