Roma vs Porto Predictions & Betting Tips, Match Previews

Roma managed to come away from Porto last week with a very satisfactory result under their belts in one of the biggest matches of this Champions League playoff round. They took the lead through a 21st minute Felipe own goal, and despite having much less of the ball and far fewer shots on goal than their hosts they managed to hang on until the 61st minute, when Andre Silva netted a penalty to level the scores. Roma continued to hang on though and came away with a draw and an away goal, which has to be considered a good result.

They followed this up with a convincing 4-0 win over Udinese on Saturday as they kicked off their domestic campaign, so at the moment everything is looking rather good for Roma.

The hosts will feel pretty confident about their chances of making it through to the group stages despite their tough draw, and they will be hoping to replicate the form that took them all the way to the quarter finals last season. Roma have made it to the group stages in five of their last ten seasons as well.

Porto aren’t exactly amateurs in the Champions League though. They were famously led to victory in the competition by a young Jose Mourinho earlier in the millennium, and they have reached the group stages of the Champions League in each of their last five seasons, making it to the quarter finals in the 2014/15 campaign.

However, they now have a big ask to go to the Stadio Olimpico and come away with a score draw or better, to keep their hopes alive. Porto did manage to get another win under their belts at the weekend when they beat Estoril 1-0 to make it two wins out of two in the Portuguese Premier League, but a visit to Roma is expected to be much tougher for them.

One major hope for Porto is the fact that Roma have a number of key players ruled out through injury. Defensive quartet Mario Rui, Antonio Rudiger, Vasilis Torosidis, and Abdullahi Nura are all out injured, whilst fellow defender Thomas Vermaelen is suspended.

This will give Porto confidence in the attacking department, and I would expect them to find the net at least once on Tuesday. However, Roma have scored in each of their last 18 matches, conceding in 12 of them. Porto have conceded in 11 of their last 15 matches as well, scoring in all but one of them. This, plus Roma’s injury problems at the back, makes a prediction of both teams to score at 5/6 look a good value bet. I’m going for a repeat of last week with a 1-1 correct score prediction at 6/1 as well.