Will OGC’s downward spiral continue?
The home team “Azuis e brancos” started the Europa League with two wins, but have failed to win their last two games. Read our Porto vs. Nice tip to find out why we believe this dry spell is coming to an end!
The reason for our expectation is OGC – the French have been disappointing across the board so far. Together with Glasgow Rangers, they are the only team in the competition still waiting for their first points.
Nice lost a string of top players before the season, including center back Jean-Clair Todibo and goalkeeper Marcin Bulka. This allowed them to replenish their coffers, but at the same time, the team has lost a lot of quality compared to last year. Given this situation, we are predicting another defeat for the southern French team in the match between Porto and Nice, with a difference of at least two goals.
We also expect more than two goals from last season’s third-placed team in the Portuguese top flight. French coach Franck Haise’s side travel with the second-weakest defense in the current Europa League – only Young Boys Bern concede more goals than the French, with an average of 2.25 goals conceded per EL game.
Porto – Nice Head-to-head record
The teams are facing each other for the first time. For Porto’s debut against Nice, the odds clearly favor the 30-time Portuguese champions.
Furthermore, Porto’s last encounter with a French club was in the round of 16 of the 2021/22 Europa League. At that time, they crossed swords with Lyon, recording a 1-1 away draw and a 0-1 defeat in front of their own fans.
Nice’s only encounter with a Portuguese opponent in Europe took place in the Champions League qualifying phase this season. The OGC suffered two 2-0 defeats against Benfica.
Porto – Nice Tip
Admittedly, the “Dragões” have recently had room for improvement in the Europa League with a defeat at the “Tricky Trees” in Nottingham and a draw in Utrecht, but compared to Nice, we still see the home side as clear favorites to win.
OGC are still without points and have been waiting for a win in European competitions for 14 games (0-4-10). This means that the visitors share the worst run of any French club with AS Monaco, who also went 14 games without a win between May 2017 and December 2018.
Recently, their form has been particularly poor, with four consecutive defeats on the national and international stage. The hosts, on the other hand, are performing very consistently in their domestic league.
After eleven rounds of play, Italian coach Francesco Farioli’s team sits atop the table and has conceded the fewest goals in the league. The strength of the defense in the Portuguese league is quickly apparent from the fact that they have kept eight clean sheets in the eleven league games played this season!
For the match at Estádio do Dragão, the Porto vs. Nice betting odds for a home win by at least two goals are therefore recommended. Porto’s European home strength is another factor in favor of this: The club has lost only one of eleven home games in the Europa League group stage (7-3-1)!
Last but not least, they are more rested. Last weekend, they only had a national cup game against the lower-ranked Sintrense, and the comfortable 3-0 home win took little effort.
