Atletico Paranaese vs Caracas Predictions

Wednesday’s Copa Sudamericana round of 16, second leg action sees Brazilians Atletico PR going up against Venezuelans Caracas. The hosts will be looking for another strong showing having won the first leg 2-0.

Considering they haven’t won a single away game this season in domestic, Serie A action, it was something of a surprise to see Atletico win in Venezuela so comfortably. Nonetheless, huge favourites coming into the tie, Furacão were able to assert their undoubted extra quality over Caracas in said match and now find themselves all but into the quarter-finals.

As poor as Atletico have been on the road, on home soil they’ve been simply dominant for months and for that exact reason, you can say the tie is essentially over. Tiago Nunes’s troops have been rampant at the Arena da Baixada, winning their last 8 games there whilst scoring an average of 2.5 goals a game and keeping 6 clean sheets; statistics that have confidence running very high going into Wednesday’s match.

Ultimately, if Caracas were to have any hope of causing an upset over two legs they need to win the first leg and having failed to do so they now face an almost impossible task on further enhancing a continental run that has already seen them eliminate Chileans Everton and Peruvians Sport Huancayo.

In terrible form, losing their last 3 games without even so much as scoring a goal, the visitors’ only real aim for the trip can be avoiding humiliation and Los Rojos del Ávila are likely to bring a defensive game plan as a result. Given they were dumped out of the competition at the first hurdle last season. Caracas have done well to even reach this point but it certainly does look like the end of the road for them, barring any miracle.

This a match we fully expect Atletico PR to win at a canter. Despite the obvious gap in quality and resource between the two, we did doubt the Brazilians’ capacity to win on the road in the first leg, but on home soil they should have far too much for a Caracas side in poor shape.

All things considered, backing Atletico to win to nil looks the way to play and at a more than reasonable price, that’s exactly where our money is going. As mentioned above, Atletico rarely concede in front of their own fans and Caracas hardly look like an outfit capable of bucking said trend, whilst at the other end we can see the hosts having plenty of joy; with a 3-0 margin of home victory on the cards.