Artem Frankov: "The match in Manchester was a real celebration of football idiocy"

Famous journalist and editor-in-chief of Football magazine Artem Frankov has prepared a forecast for the Sevilla vs Manchester United Europa League match.

- The match in Manchester was a real celebration of football idiocy - it was, of course, about Sevilla's comeback with two home goals (Malasia and Maguire). It's okay, I, for one, know the match perfectly well, in which the visitors hit the net four times. From the point of view of the two-match confrontation, the score 2:2 means only a draw and that everything will be decided at Sanchez-Pizjuan (hyphenated, this was the name of Don Ramon, who died in 1956!), starting with 0:0.

Having fired the tattooed criminal mastermind Yura Svyatopavlovsky (Jorge Sampaoli) and appointed Jose Luis Mendilibar Echebarria (what-what did they do with the bar? Twice!), Sevilla improved its position in the Spanish championship. After a nightmarish 1-6 loss to Atletico on March 4, the team has won three games in five rounds and drawn once. You can relax and focus on what Sevilla knows better than anyone else - advancing through the Europa League playoffs.

However, MU is not much worse at this art than Sevillanos - in 2017, the team won the Europa League during the reign of Jose Mourinho, and in the past lost in the final to Villarreal following an unusually abundant series of 11-meter penalties. In addition, the current team of Eric ten Hag, despite its obvious weaknesses and the ability to suddenly fall apart (0-7 against Liverpool!), has many trump cards, such as the postponement of the next league match against Chelsea, which allows the team to play well in Spain. The history of MU's visits to the Pyrenees is rich and varied, but I think you'll forgive me if I leave this thesis for better times. It is worth noting that this season the Mancunians could well move their base to Spain - Sevilla is their fourth local rival after Real Sociedad, Barcelona and Betis, and none of the locals have managed to beat the English. You may laugh, but ten Hag did something like that: he spent the December training camp in Spain (Betis - 1:0, Cadiz - 4:2)! Clever, foolish... In total - five wins and one draw, just with Barcelona.

Unfortunately, there is one very significant factor in favor of the Andalusians. The list of pre-match losses is incredibly long and concerns only MU. We have to start with the disqualification of the team's chief dispatcher Bruno Fernandes. And now the injuries: Rushford, Shaw, Zabitzer (author of two goals in the first match!), Maktominey, Lisandro Martinez (until the end of the season), Jones, Malasia, van de Beck, Heaton. That is, a whole dozen people are excluded from the application of up to 25 people! At Chelsea, this resulted in 600 million dollars in purchases and a disaster...

In short, the English personnel advantage on the eve of the return match is almost lost. And for an appetizer, don't forget that David De Gea never knew how to take a penalty, but Moroccan Sevillano Bunu has this pseudo-lottery art. My bet: Sevilla's passage through the 11-meter box at odds of 12.00!" said Frankov.