Independiente del Valle vs Colo Colo Betting Tips and Predictions

They progressed into this stage only last week by beating Paraguay’s Guarani on away goals after a 2-2 aggregate scoreline. Jose Angulo scored the crucial goal in the away leg and although Independiente lost 2-1 on the night, they made it into the group stage, something they failed to last year.

They’ve not had a league game since then after their crunch match with LDU Quito was postponed so should be fresh for this game and they are favourites to win it despite their relative inexperience at this level. They last made the group stage in 2014 and are unbeaten in 5 Libertadores home matches overall with the altitude of Quito certainly giving them a helping hand.

Colo Colo are the bigger club and have more continental experience overall. They were in the group stage last year and picked up 3 wins but 3 defeats and exited the competition as a result.

They are usually quite a positive side and there tends to be quite a few goals in their matches. There have been 2 or more goals in all of their last 17 Libertadores games in a run stretching back to 2010 and both teams have scored in all but 4 of them. They are currently 5th in the Chilean Primera Division after a solid start to the season and qualified for this competition as 2015 Apertura winners.

Brazil’s Atletico Mineiro will be expected to progress from this group but these two could be battling it out for the other place and a win here would be a huge boost to either side. Both teams like to get forward so this should be a decent game. Both teams have scored in 14 of Independiente’s last 17 matches and although they’ve won 8 of their last 12, the fact that they’ve been conceding goals against average teams in Ecuador suggests Colo Colo will get some joy here and the Chileans have only failed to score in 3 of their last 30 games. Therefore backing both teams to score here at 21/20 might be where the smart money lies.

The altitude factor shouldn’t be understated here though and Quito teams have a fearsome home record in continental competition so consider backing a 2-1 home win at 15/2.