Nacional De Football vs Atletico Mineiro Predictions

Wednesday’s Copa Libertadores group stage action sees Uruguayans Nacional going up against Brazilians Atletico Mineiro. The visitors are desperate for the three points and arrive as favourites to secure them against a home outfit that hasn’t really convinced so far this year.

Despite having looked quite a weak and vulnerable outfit so far in 2019, hosts Nacional managed to kick off their Libertadores campaign in perfect fashion last week, travelling to Venezuela to face Zamora and coming back with a 1-0 win, which is thus far their only competitive victory this year.

Indeed, with a stronger outfit in town on Wednesday, the hosts need to improve if they are to secure a positive result and will be desperate to do so, given that a win would leave them in a great position. Nonetheless, having lost 4-1 to Wanderers and drew 2-2 with Boston River in their last two home games, Nacional aren’t looking particularly powerful on home soil and the amount of goals they’ve conceded during said matches has to be a concern ahead of this game.

Meanwhile, whilst Atletico Mineiro have been pretty impressive thus far in 2019, they suffered a shock 1-0 home defeat to Cerro Porteno last week and that leaves the pressure firmly on them in this fixture. Expected to qualify from the group with relative ease, Galo can afford no further slip-ups and will travel to the Uruguayan capital fully focused on the task in hand.

Having already beaten Uruguayan opposition in the form of Danubio and Defensor Sporting in the qualification rounds of the competition, Atletico will certainly be confident in getting the job done on Wednesday. Also unbeaten in 5 away games, the visitors’ prospects look bright coming into the game, particularly because they’ve won the latter 3 of said matches without even conceding a goal.

Ultimately, whilst Nacional are historically quite a difficult team to face on the road, they’re not looking very impressive at the moment. Beating a weak Zamora outfit is one thing, but the hosts have shipped goals on home soil in recent weeks to opponents of far lesser pedigree than Atletico Mineiro.

All things considered, we’re happy to back an away win here at a reasonable price. Man for man, Atletico are a stronger outfit than Nacional and needing the points, we can’t see them slipping up, with a 1-0 margin of away victory on the cards.