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Earlier Tuesday, the Champions League semifinals opened with a bang, as Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern München played out a nine-goal thriller that immediately vaulted itself into the annals as one of the greatest games in the sport’s history. This afternoon’s second semifinal between Arsenal and Atlético Madrid has been less widely ballyhooed, but each team is extremely talented and can definitely give the PSG-Bayern winner a challenge in the final on May 30.
The first leg of the semifinal is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET (9 p.m. local) at the Estadio Metropolitano in Madrid, and the return leg is set for next Tuesday at the same time in London. The winner will go on to face either Die Roten or Les Parisiens in Budapest.
Neither of these teams has quite as talented an attack as Bayern or Paris, so the fireworks are likely to be more muted than they were during the nine-goal affair. However, there are -1600 odds that there will be at least one goal, so the Anytime Goalscorer market is still worth exploring.
The Gunners are +150 favorites to win the opening leg on DraftKings Sportsbook (-215 to advance to the final), and Atleti is +200 (+165 to advance). A draw is available at +220.
Unlike in the build-up to Tuesday’s game, it feels far from inevitable that any player will find the back of the net, and the odds reflect that, as no player has shorter than +230 odds to score. Both of the players with the shortest odds play for Los Colchoneros, with Alexander Sørloth (+230) leading the way and Antoine Griezmann (+235) following closely behind. After that, Arsenal’s main man, Viktor Gyökeres (+270), paces the Gunners, with Atleti’s Julian Álvarez (+285) and Arsenal’s Eberechi Eze (+390) the next-most likely.
Both teams are capable of stopping the other’s attackers, but the Gunners are on another level defensively behind their center-back partnership of Gabriel and William Saliba, arguably the best duo in the world. They’ve given up just five goals in 12 matches in the Champions League, as well as just 2.75 shots on target per match, and they’ve won aerial duels at the fourth-highest rate while forcing the third-most high turnovers per match. Los Colchoneros have a respectable defense in their own right, winning ground duels at a higher rate than Arsenal, but 1.78 expected goals per match simply won’t cut it in a Champions League semifinal. They’ve also been among the worst teams against set pieces, and the Gunners have been dominant in such situations. Plus, David Raya is better between the sticks than Jan Oblak, especially since the Slovenian is coming off of a muscle strain that cost him more than a month of action.
Arsenal’s best bet is Gyökeres. The Swede had a slow start to his Gunners career, but he’s thrived as of late, netting in three of his last five starts for club and country, and he also scored a goal off the bench in Arsenal’s 2-1 loss to Southampton in the FA Cup semifinals. Gyökeres scoring would hardly be new for Atleti, which saw him score a brace during the League Phase on October 21. Eze, who also scored the lone goal in the Gunners’ Premier League win over Newcastle on Saturday and has three goals in his last eight games, could be a value option.
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