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Europa League Betting
If you want to put a wager on the Europa League betting then join the best bookie for football, namely
Bet365 (& £200 FREE). The Europa League used to be called the UEFA Cup and it is an interesting European football competition for betting purposes.
EUROPA LEAGUE FINAL Match Betting
Match Betting; Final is 7.45pm, Wednesday, May 9; click best odds bold:
| Bet365 | Betfred |
Stan James | BetVictor | Paddy Power | William Hill |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATLETICO MADRID | 7/5 | 11/8 |
6/4 | 29/20 | 6/4 | 6/4 |
| ATHLETIC BILBAO | 15/8 | 2/1 |
15/8 | 2/1 | 15/8 | 2/1 |
| DRAW | 12/5 | 23/10 |
23/10 | 12/5 | 9/4 | 2/1 |
EUROPA LEAGUE BETTING ODDS outright
To win trophy:
| Bet365 | Betfred |
Stan James | BetVictor | Paddy Power | William Hill |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATLETICO MADRID | 5/6 | 4/5 |
4/5 | - | 4/5 | 8/11 |
| ATHLETIC BILBAO | 1/1 | 1/1 |
1/1 | - | 1/1 | 1/1 |
Europa League betting secrets
When it comes to Europa League betting, it pays to keep your powder dry and wait until you can see the whites of their eyes. For once, seeking early season value, especially if you are seduced by the inevitable hype into fancying the pre-tournament favourite, has proved a pretty disastrous strategy for the past few years.
Instead, there are potentially massive profits to be made by the canny, patient punters seeking big pay outs from outsiders that have escaped the hype radar. Not so long ago, Roma were viewed as the likely victors of the Europa League for many well publicised reasons. Strong arguments that seemed perfectly plausible at the time were made to support their claims and yet they left the tournament long before the final stages.
A year earlier, AC Milan were favourites in the Europa League betting odds for equally good reasons but they did not even reach the final 16. Bayern Munich were also rated as worthy favourites in the previous season but that they also failed to deliver.
In any knockout tournament, all seasoned football fans partial to betting know that anything can and will happen and in the former UEFA Cup competition it often does. Even the most fervent Fulham supporters were more than slightly surprised to find themselves watching their team playing in the final against Atletico Madrid. No, it was not a dream. They lost.
Why Europa League betting markets are so challenging
There is one blindingly obvious reason. You don’t even know who the supposedly higher quality teams plummeting from the Champions League will be at the outset. And you do not know how seriously they will take their quest for the spoils of the second ranking European league if they find themselves part of it. It makes Europa League betting odds a trifle dangerous.
Having been unceremoniously ejected from the Champions League, they may treat the demotion with disdain and play accordingly. On the other hand, you may be able to risk a bet on them to reap the benefits of their often substantial experience of playing in Europe and to endeavour to salvage some credit in the Europa League.
No one except the masterminds of the UEFA Executive Committee is exactly certain why the UEFA Cup was reformatted and completely rebranded as the UEFA Europa League following a decision taken in November 2007. The UEFA Cup seemed to have been ticking along relatively nicely since it was set running in 1971. Yes, in European club football terms, it had always played second string to the Champions League, but no amount of rebranding and reformatting were ever going to change that characteristic of the competition.
Part of the revamp included automatically encompassing ten of the teams unsuccessful in the UEFA Champions League play offs in the group stage but, to the uninitiated, there didn’t appear to be that much wrong with it beforehand.
In case you haven’t noticed the structural changes, the group stage underwent expansion to comprise 12 groups of four. Participants play each of the other trio of teams in their group both at home and away, providing a few additional Europa League betting odds opportunities. At the end of this group stage, the two highest placed teams within the 12 groups will go forward to the next round.
Beware patriotic Europa League betting
For UK punters, patriotic Europa League betting has not been a path to profits in recent years, excluding of course the fortunate few who had an each way bet on Fulham. After a blistering start in the initial Europa League tournaments, or UEFA Cup as it was then known, there has been a significant fall from grace in terms of outright wins for UK teams.
In the first ever UEFA Cup tournament in 1972, Spurs beat Wolves to the top spot on aggregate. The following year it was Liverpool who triumphed over Borussia Monchengladbach and in 1976 they regained their title as UEFA Cup winners. It was a steep downhill path from that point on for UK teams with only Ipswich Town triumphing in the 1980s. UK teams consistently failed to lift the trophy until Liverpool once again managed to do so in 2001.
Since the turn of the century, it is the Spanish flag that appears most prominently on the list of winners with two victories for Sevilla as well as single wins for Valencia and Atletico Madrid.
Favourite followers in the Europa League betting would rather forget all about 2009. The Ukrainian team Shakhtar Donetsk beat Werder Bremen by two goals to one in extra time in the final. Most of us did not even recognise the flag of Ukraine. The bookies odds obviously failed to factor in the effect of their Brazilian strikers, Jadson and Adriano, both of whom scored in the final.
Italian teams have failed even to make the final this century and have been absent from the list since their halcyon decade of the 1990s which was largely due to the outstanding efforts of Internazionale, winners in 1991, 1994 and 1998, and two victories each for Parma and Juventus in the same decade.
At the end of 2010 it seemed extraordinary that Manchester City were the favourites in the Europa League betting. A number of commentators could not help observing that they were more likely to concentrate on improving their domestic results to achieve entry into the Champions League rather than focus on the Europa League.
How to choose Europa League betting victor
The short answer is that it is not easy and no one has found a formula to explain the recent results. On the positive side, that means that if you get it right, you do not have to place a large bet to make serious money, just look at the odds on offer for the latest winners. Try to ignore the early favourites and do thorough research on the outsiders in the Europa League betting odds.