Europa League Betting – Zenit St. Petersburg at Sevilla

Zenit St. Petersburg (+500) at Sevilla (-150), Draw (+290)

Sevilla and Zenit St. Petersburg are set to square off in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Europa League tomorrow at Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán Stadium (1:05 p.m. Eastern).

Sevilla may see this matchup as a promising portent. The last time they faced Zenit in the quarterfinals (2006-07), they went on to win the tournament.

If they’re going to repeat that feat, however, they’ll have to get by a St. Petersburg team that narrowly missed qualifying for the Champions League knockout phase.

As one of the eight third-placed teams from the UCL Group Stage, Zenit earned a spot in the Europa League Round of 32. There, they dominated PSV Eindhoven, winning 4-0 on aggregate. The squad then narrowly edged Torino, 2-1, in the Round of 16.

Sevilla, meanwhile, finished second in Group G of the Europa League Group Stage, beat Mönchengladbach 4-2 on aggregate in the Round of 32, and crushed rival Villareal 5-2 in the last round. The upstart Spanish squad has a solid 3-0-1 home record against Russian teams with all three victories coming in the UEFA Cup/Europa League. They have also been good at home of late, winning their last six at Sánchez-Pizjuán Stadium in European competitions.

Zenit, on the other hand, has only managed two wins in 14 tries against Spanish sides and hasn’t managed a single victory in their last seven. The have also lost their last six games in Spain and five of their last six, overall, as visitors.

Bumping that trend is going to be difficult tomorrow, not only due to Sevilla’s solid performance at home, but also because the team will be without several key starters.

Domenico Criscito, Igor Smolnikov, Danny, and Hulk are all banned for the first match of the two-game series.

Villas-Boas realizes this will create quite the predicament.

“We have to think hard since we have four players that are suspended and we have to think about the objective. Sevilla has quality, experience and recent success in this tournament. All this makes our task even more difficult”, said the manager.

All the suspensions have Zenit sitting as a massive +500 underdog at the moment, while Sevilla are -150 to get the win and the draw is at +290. Zenit will likely sit back and play for the tie on the road in light of all the missing players; consider the draw at +290.

(Photo credit: Голубович Дмитрий [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)