Champions League Final stats
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Real Madrid will look to claim the elusive ‘Decima’ on Saturday night when they face city rivals Atletico in Lisbon. Xabi Alonso is suspended for Real with Asier Illarramendi expected to deputise and Isco on standby to play if Karim Benzema or Cristiano Ronaldo are not fit to start. Atletico, meanwhile, have a more serious absentee, with Diego Costa almost certain not to play after aggravating a hamstring problem against Barcelona last weekend.
While Atletico bettered their neighbours in La Liga as they claimed an amazing title, Real won both legs when they met in the Copa Del Rey semi-final and so in 2014 they have a W2-D1-L0 record in the head-to-heads. Atletico are unbeaten in Europe this season but Real have scored 14 more goals in the 12 games to get here as Ronaldo has set a new record for the most individual goals in a single campaign.
Since 2001 the team with the highest Football Form Labs grading has won seven of the 13 finals with just one defeat in 90 minutes. All five matches that went to extra-time also went to penalties. While Atletico have closed the gap between the teams we still rank Real higher and they look value at 2.05 to win in 90 minutes.
The goals markets make Under 2.5 Goals the favourite but there is an obvious conflict between Atletico’s very strong ‘unders’ record and Real’s ‘overs’ trend. Seven of the last 13 finals have had at least three goals but this could go either way and we’ll avoid these markets.
Cristiano Ronaldo is the favourite to be the first scorer and since 2012/13 Real have opened the scoring in 16 of their 24 Champions League games with CR netting the first goal of the match on seven occasions and also Real’s first goal in half the eight matches they conceded first. This will be his third Champions League final and he’s 4.33 to replicate his performance of 2008 when he scored first against Chelsea in Moscow while you can get 2.2 on the Portuguese star to score at anytime.
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