Champions League Betting – Real Ready to Oust Roma

AS Roma (+700) at Real Madrid (-250), Draw (+425)

It will take a massive upset for AS Roma to move onto the quarterfinal round of the UEFA Champions League. The Italian side lost the first leg of their home-and-home series with Real Madrid, 2-0, in Rome. Now they’ll need to beat Real at Santiago Bernabeu by the same margin just to force extra time. The squads will square off this afternoon at 2:45 PM Eastern.

Roma may have a glimmer of hope; Madrid have struggled lately in La Liga (relatively speaking), winning just one of their last four, including a 1-0 home setback to intracity rival Atletico Madrid. Real have also suffered one lopsided loss at home this year, but that came against Barcelona (4-0), the top club in the world.

They are currently 12 points back of league-leading Barca and four down on Atletico.

It should be noted, of course, that Real got back in the win column last time out in a big way, thrashing Celta Vigo 7-1. And the setbacks to Barcelona and Atletico are their only home losses on the year.

Roma, on the other hand, have been on a roll in Serie A, winning three straight in impressive fashion, hammering Palermo (5-0 home), Empoli (3-1 road), and Fiorentina (4-1 home).

But they haven’t won on the road in the Champions League since the 2010 Group Stage when they beat FC Basel.  This season, they recorded losses against BATE Borisov (3-2) and Barcelona (6-1) and a draw against Bayer Leverkusen (4-4).

Roma will need to play a perfect game – and see Real Madrid put in a subpar performance – in order to leave Spain with a win. Instead, I think it’s far more likely that Real capitalize on the counter-attack against an overly aggressive Roma side.

Pick: Real Madrid (-250). 

(Photo credit: RCuerda29 (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode].)