Chelsea starts off their CL campaign travelling to the Stadion Maksimir to face an in-form Zagreb, coached by Ante Cacic and whose side hasn’t been beaten at home this year.
They qualified for the group stages by beating Bodo/Glimt 4-2 on aggregate after extra time with very late goals from Drmic and Bockaj to round off a memorable night, that victory allowed Zagreb to compete in this competition for the 8th time, winning only 5 matches out of a possible 42.
Meanwhile, The Blue’s away record in the CL reads a lot better winning 10 of their last 11 away matches and securing 16 victories from their previous 18 CL opening games. In the PL they’ve conceded 9 times, it would have been 10 had VAR not made a monumental error and chalked off a late West Ham equaliser in their last game. Overall, it’s been a poor start for a team of quality internationals who probably just need a little more time to gel.
Dinamo by name dynamic by nature, reaching the 2020-21 Europa League quarter-finals and posting wins over Sevilla and West Ham along the way, the Croatian Champions are on a 26-game unbeaten home run and if they are to earn something out of the tie, Mislav Orsic is going to be the dangerman and he has proved that by having already notched 8 goals this season in his domestic league.
Nevertheless, Chelsea will be encouraged by their host’s failing to keep a clean sheet in their last 10 fixtures, but as it is the first-ever meeting between these 2 sides we have no H2H data to go by. The under/over 2.5 goals stats show that over Zagreb’s last 20 games, +2.5 goals stands at 75% with Chelsea’s at 60%. Over the same period, Zagreb has averaged 2.7 goals per game to Chelsea’s 1.4.
Key stats
* Zagreb only lost once in the last 20 games
* Chelsea 45%-win rate over the last 20 matches
* Zagreb 90% BTTS in last 10 games
* Chelsea haven’t drawn away for 10 games
* Chelsea 55% BTTS over last 20 games
A Chelsea win, and they should dominate possession and stop Zegreb counterattacks with ease.Their home record is impeccable but Chelsea are miles ahead in quality of any of their opponents during that unbeaten period. 0-2 is the prediction with Sterling to open the scoring.
