Borussia Dortmund vs Athletic Bilbao Predictions, Betting Tips, & Match Preview

Borussia Dortmund finish their pre-season off in Austria against Athletic Bilbao, their last club friendly of the summer before the German Super Cup final against Bayern Munich this Sunday. Dortmund’s pre-season overall has been promising, although far from perfect. They started well with three consecutive wins early in July, scoring ten goals over the duration but a 1-0 defeat to 2. Bundesliga side 1860 Munchen shortly after put a disappointing blemish on their otherwise stellar results sheet. It didn’t take Dortmund long to make up for this bump in the road, however, as they bounced back just six days later with a dominating performance against Manchester United in the International Champions Cup, winning 4-1 thanks to goals from Gonzalo Castro, Dembele and Aubameyang. Since then, Dortmund have played twice, once against Manchester City and once against Sunderland, drawing 1-1 both times.

Athletic Bilbao finished 5th in La Liga last season, just 2 points behind Villarreal and 4th placed UEFA Champions League playoff round qualification. As a result, their summer preparations focus towards the UEFA Europa League alongside another season in the top flight. For the 2016/2017 campaign Athletic Bilbao head straight into the group stages, an improvement on the qualifying rounds they would have been playing 12 months earlier – the fixtures to which have not yet been set. Most notable for Bilbao last year, however, was managing to win their first piece of silverware since the early 1980’s – an aggregate win of 5-1 against Barcelona was enough to take the Spanish Super Cup back to Basque.

Athletic Bilbao’s “Basque only” policy means the summer transfer window is not usually an eventful affair and, as such, they tend to have much more consistency in their squad than other La Liga teams, so there won’t be too many surprises here. Dortmund, contrastingly, have been very active in the transfer period, and while they will be sad to see the likes of staple players Mats Hummels, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, and Ilkay Gundogan leaving, they have certainly made some smart signings to fill these gaps – Andre Schurrle and Mario Gotze were brought in from Wolfsburg and Bayern Munich respectively, adding more danger going forward. Meanwhile, centre-back Marc Batra joined them from Barcelona to further solidify an already decent back four.

Borussia Dortmund may be the stronger side on paper and the bookie’s favourites for this match, but we feel the value comes from a low scoring outcome here. Both sides are likely to feature a mix of experienced and less experienced players, with up to 11 substitutions from each side, and as the start of the season draws closer the main aim will be to make sure everything is functioning as it should be and that, ultimately, as few mistakes as possible are made. Considering this alongside the fact that under 2.5 goals were scored in four of Dortmund’s last six and four of Athletic Bilbao’s last five pre-season friendlies makes this market hold the value for us. Not to mention that Athletic Bilbao have failed to score in their last two consecutive club friendlies.

Hence, under 2.5 goals at 6/5 and Borussia Dortmund to win 1-0 at 7/1 with bet365 are our top value bets for this match.