While the four Europa League quarter-finals went with the form book, that has not been the case with the Champions League equivalent with shocks and goals aplenty occurring over the past week. Each of the eight sides all got on the scoresheet while two of the clubs - RB Leipzig and Lyon - upset the bookmakers betting odds to earn a spot in the last four of European football's premier competition. Although there is little argument that Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich are the favourites to progress through to the final, the last few days have suggested that you should be looking a little deeper when placing your bets on the upcoming two ties.
At a time when you can take advantage of freebets.com, we feel that you should be looking at a both-teams-to-score double. Although you will only likely get betting odds of just under 2/1, you have to take into consideration that none of these clubs look particularly strong in defence. If we were pushed to name one team who could keep a clean sheet, we would back PSG to shutout a Leipzig side who are now without Timo Werner, but the German side showed against Atletico Madrid that they can still make a sustained impact against defensively-solid opposition. Selecting one team to keep a clean sheet in that fixture takes the double in excess of 3/1, and there are grounds for thinking that there is value in taking a bigger risk.
With there being little point in placing individual bets on the favourites to reach the final, thought should be given to placing an emphasis on goalscorers bets. As it stands, the majority of bookmakers are offering in excess of Evens for either Kylian Mbappe or Neymar to score during the standard 90 minutes against Leipzig. While they will come up against the commanding Dayot Upamecano, you have to expect one of the world-class duo to breach the opposition's defences at some point in the contest. We also love the 3/1 which is on offer for Dani Olmo, a player motivated to keep living up to his improving reputation on such a big stage. The 22-year-old has 13 strikes to his name throughout 2019-20, and we would not bet against him adding to that tally on Tuesday night.
As far as the other contest is concerned, there is minimal value in backing any of the Bayern players. Despite the high likelihood of the Bundesliga champions scoring several times, their return is usually spread throughout the squad and there is little point in backing any of their attacking contingent at low odds. Instead, our focus is on Lyon trio Houssem Aouar, Maxwel Cornet and Memphis Depay. While Aouar is available as high as 8/1 to score anytime with some bookmakers, there is probably more sense in backing Depay in and around the 3/1 mark. Lyon will likely require something spectacular, and their best bet is Depay. Combine the selection of Depay with Olmo and you are getting a double in the region of 15/1, odds which are impossible to ignore given the scenarios which could play out in the fixtures in Portugal.
