Football Tips: Our 3 best bets for Atalanta v Real Madrid on Wednesday

* All prices are bang up to date with our snazzy widgets, while odds in copy are accurate at time of publishing but subject to change.

Wednesday night’s Champions League action sees one of the European giants of football take on one of the modern upstarts. Real Madrid are away to Atalanta and, in a rarity for the Champions League, the away side are outsiders to win here. Both teams are in pretty good form but Real are without a good few of their best starting XI. Let’s have a look for the Three Best Bets for this Champions League Last 16 tie.

Over 3.5 Goals

Atalanta are a great team when it comes to betting on goals. Three of their last five in all competitions have seen Over 3.5 goals while nine of their last 10 home matches have also seen Over 3.5 goals. Looking at recent Real Madrid matches, only one of their last three saw Over 3.5, two saw Over 2.5 goals. This match will be Real Madrid’s 100th knockout match in the Champions League and the pressure is on them here to get a good result.

8pm Wednesday: Atalanta v Real Madrid
BT Sport 3

At the same stage over the last two seasons they’ve gone out to both Ajax and Manchester City and over those four matches they only won one leg. With so many of their best starting XI on the treatment bench it could well be a tough night for Los Blancos but they’re scoring a decent amount of goals of late, scoring at least two in four of their last six fixtures.

Atalanta only know one way to play football, the score-loads-of-goals type, and as we’ve seen over the last few seasons they don’t fear anyone in the competition. They’ll attack from the start and we should see a few goals here.

Zinedine Zidane

Luis Muriel to Score Anytime

Decent cases to be made for both of Atalanta’s main attacking threats, the Colombian strikeforce of Duvan Zapata and Luis Muriel. Zapata has picked up his form of late and while he only has nine Serie A goals over 23 appearances, he has three in six in the Champions League and two in his last two home games for Atalanta.

Luis Muriel has more goals to his name though, he’s scored 14 in 21 Serie A appearances, two in five in the CL and three in his last four in an Atalanta shirt. Muriel is in the slightly better form and the odds are higher on him to Score Anytime here so he’s getting the nod.

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BTTS in the Second Half

If ever a match screamed Both Teams to Score this is one of them, both are scoring and conceding plenty of late and it’s hard to imagine both not getting on the scoresheet here. The current odds though aren’t the best but we can get some value out of alternative options. BTTS has landed in eight out of 12 home Serie A Atalanta matches and in eight out of 13 away La Liga matches for Real Madrid. It has landed in four of Atalanta’s six most previous home CL matches as well and in three of Real’s five most recent in the competitions.

Both teams this season are scoring most of their goals in the second half of matches, Atalanta have scored 57 per cent of their in the second period of play, while Real have scored 62 per cent of theirs in the SH. Some decent odds available here on BTTS in the Second Half so we’re going with that here.