In the EC qualifiers, San Marino has messed up the opponent’s net in their previous two matches.
Benjamin Källman (right) and Filippo Fabbri (left) measured each other in June when Finland hosted San Marino at the Olympic Stadium. EPA / AOP
The most interesting game of the day
Finland’s EC qualifiers end today with an away match against San Marino.
From the point of view of the EC final tournament, the match has nothing but a training contribution for the Huuhkajs. The next important game for the Games is the first part of the further qualifiers in March.
In this game, along with practice and experiments, the most interesting thing might be whether the Huuhkajat will be able to stop the opponent San Marino’s record scoring streak.
San Marino is competing for the title of the weakest national team in Europe, and success or even scoring a goal is not an issue for it in any of the prestigious qualifiers. Now San Marino has scored goals against both Kazakhstan (1–3) and Denmark (1–2) in their previous two matches. Succeeding in two consecutive matches is a new record for the country. A third goal game in a row would be almost a sensation.
San Marino’s European Championship qualification history begins in 1990. Since then, the team has played 85 matches in the European Championship qualifiers with a balance of 0-1-84, goals 10–375. At home the catch is 0-1-41 goals 7-147.
Finland is one of those rare countries against which San Marino has managed to score a goal. This happened at the Olympic Stadium on 14 December 1994, when the match ended 4–1.
In its history, San Marino took its only EC qualification point from Estonia at home in 2014 with a 0–0 draw.
In these qualifiers, San Marino’s balance after nine rounds is recorded 0-0-9 goals 2-29, i.e. on average its matches have ended 0.22-3.22. This gives a very rough goal estimate for tonight’s encounter.
Of course, San Marino may now play too boldly and aggressively for themselves due to their goal streak. In principle, this can increase Finland’s goal chances.
In all scenarios, Finland is about a 93–94% favorite in the match. It’s hard to imagine the Huhkajis going into a match without stakes with a particularly bad defensive attitude, so I don’t consider San Marino’s goal threat here to be much higher than its normal performance.
When Finland also got its greatest scoring pressure released against Northern Ireland last time, so in terms of betting, the San Marino–Finland match tastes best with “low scoring”. In this match, it means less than 3.5 goals. The offered odds of 1.89 for under 3.5 goals is even very close to playable in my estimation of 52%.
San Marino–Finland starts at 21:45.
The best betting tip of the day
The best betting idea for Monday is the low scoring of the Tampa Bay-Boston match in the NHL.
Despite Tampa’s downward trend, the meeting between these teams still has a strong taste of a top match. This same feature has strongly marked the encounters between Tampa and Boston in recent seasons.
In terms of play, both teams have focused quite well on defensive work in their mutual matches. This has even been seen as an exceptional lack of goals in the matches between these two teams.
Four of the five previous mutual games have ended with less than 5.5 goals in actual playing time, and eight of the previous ten also. The goal average in the ten previous matches is only 4.6 goals per game in terms of actual playing time. The trend is clear even for a small sample size in the goal-rich NHL.
This season, Boston is one of the lowest scoring teams in the NHL. Its early season goal-per-match average in actual game time is only 5.25 goals per game.
In the over and under statistics, with 5.5 goals, Boston is the second team with the fewest goals in the series. As many as 63% of its games (10/16) have ended with less than 5.5 goals.
Although Tampa belongs to its number one goalkeeper Andrei Vasilevsky because of the injury, at the moment to the teams with the most goals in the series, I think the image of this game will probably be less goal-scoring than Tampa’s fictional matches.
The 1.85 offered for under 6.0 goals in actual playing time is a coefficient worth at least consideration. Tampa–Boston starts at 2:08.
Games of the day:-
The total balance of the day’s games for the year: 125/219/100%
Every day Iltalehti chooses the most interesting game of the day and the best game destination of the day. You can always find them in the Betting and Ravit section.