Famous Ukrainian journalist Roberto Morales prepared a forecast for the first match of the Europa League qualifiers “Beşiktaş” — “Shakhtar”.
“Ole Gunnar Solskjær made quite an unexpected choice in favor of the Turkish giant after working with his practically native ‘Manchester United’. Half a year of work left a good impression, but without significant successes apart from the victory over ‘Galatasaray’.
During the offseason, there were serious difficulties in friendlies. While the first game against the Austrian ‘St. Pölten’ ended in a victory with a score of 2:0, there were then a draw with ‘Admira’ (1:1) and two defeats from very modest teams: ‘Wolfsberger’ (2:3) and Slovak ‘Petržalka’ (1:2).
This summer, 27-year-old English striker Tammy Abraham transferred from ‘Roma’ to ‘Beşiktaş’. He started last season at ‘Roma’, but spent most of it at ‘Milan’ where he played 28 matches in Serie A, scored 3 goals, and provided 4 assists. Additionally, João Mário was bought from Portuguese ‘Benfica’.
‘Shakhtar’ after friendly matches against Finnish ‘Ilves’ had another friendly against the club from the second Slovak league ‘Triglav Kranj’. At that time, there was an atypical appearance of Kyryl Fesiun, Yegor Nazaryna (in central defense), and Anton Hlushchenko. In all other respects, the main team played. Quite unexpectedly, Arda Turan in this match suffered his first defeat with ‘Shakhtar’, 0:1. However, after that match, the Donetsk team had five days to recover and prepare fully.
The bet — “Shakhtar” with a handicap (0)», — said Morales.