Football Form Labs Tuesday 15th May 2018 / 16:17

Atletico have been favourites for some time now and we expect them to lift the trophy on Wednesday night.

Atletico Madrid v Marseille – Wednesday 19:45, BT Sport

Spanish sides have dominated in the Europa League for some time now as they’ve lifted the trophy in seven of the last 12 years. At the Last 32 stage, Atletico Madrid were favourites to win this year’s competition and their performances throughout the knockout stages suggest they’re even worthier favourites now. It’s a little bit more of a surprise to see Marseille here and although they defeated Spanish opponents Athletic Bilbao in the last 16, Diego Simeone’s side represent a massive step up in class on anything else they’ve faced in this competition.

Of the 14 Europa League finals since 2004 we only have one occurrence of the higher placed team in our rankings losing in 90 minutes. Those finals have finished W9-D4-L1 in favour of our higher ranked sides – including six 90-minute successes in the last seven years – with 12 of 14 lifting the trophy. Furthermore, none of those finals saw as big a difference between the two sides as we have here so we would have Atletico a fair bit shorter to win in normal time.

Atletico Madrid

Marseille v Atletico Madrid

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