Internacional vs Athletico Paranaese Predictions

Thursday’s Brazilian Cup final, second leg action sees Internacional doing battle with Athletico PR at the Estádio Beira-Rio. The hosts will be looking to come back from a goal down in order to claim the title.

All things considered, a 1-0 defeat in last week’s first leg isn’t a disastrous result for Internacional. Indeed, a trip to face Athletico in Curitiba is never an easy one and the side will be happy to have kept the damage to minimal levels, leaving them in a good position to go on and make their own home advantage count.

Inter’s good work was always likely to be done on home soil if they were to go on and win the trophy and confidence can certainly be very high coming into Thursday’s game. Indeed, Odair Hellmann’s troops are unbeaten in a staggering 19 home matches, winning 14 times in the process and having claimed victory in all 3 of their Brazilian Cup home ties this year without even so much as conceding a goal, their prospects certainly look bright as regards turning the tie around.

Meanwhile, whilst Athletico will be happy to have established a lead to bring to Porto Alegre, that feeling is also surely tinged with disappointment that it’s not a more substantial one. Tiago Nunes’ troops controlled most of the first but found Inter a tough nut to crack and it’s now they themselves who face a 90 minutes on the backfoot.

Even a goal up, you’d have to have Athletico down as slight underdogs in this final and that’s mainly due to their far from impressive away record. For years, the team has struggled to match their impressive home form with strong away results and that’s certainly the case coming into this game, with 3 defeats from 4 on the road preceding this trip.

Ultimately, Athletico’s lead looks a very slender one and it’s hard to see them keeping it intact over the 90 minutes. Man for man, Internacional are the slightly stronger of the two and with a sell-out home crowd behind them, they should have more than enough to get the better of a visiting opponent that is weak on their travels.

All things considered, we really like the look of backing Inter to win to nil and feel it provides the best value as far as the betting is concerned, Athletico’s attacking threat is likely to be extremely limited given they will look to defend from the off and with Inter having won their last 4 home games against the visitors, we believe a 2-0 margin of home victory could well be on the cards.