Deportivo Saprissa vs Pumas UNAM 2022 Concacaf Champions League prediction: Who is more likely to win in the first leg?

The time has come for Saprissa to face Pumas UNAM in the second leg of the round of 16 in the Concacaf Champions League.

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The Costa Rican team is considered one of the biggest in Central America and is even called the "Monster", as it is the team with the most Concacaf Champions League titles, leaving aside Mexico, with three so far. In terms of their current soccer situation, the team led by Spanish coach Iñaki Alonso has one win and one tie with three losses in the Costa Rican First Division 2022.

We move on to the away side, with the ‘Universitario’ team that has also won a trio of Concachampionships in its history, a record it will seek to extend in the current edition. In terms of soccer, the team coached by Argentinean Andrés Lillini has three wins and two defeats so far in the Clausura 2022 in Mexico. 

Deportivo Saprissa vs. Pumas: a rivalry to forget

Pumas are back in the Concacaf Champions League in search of a title they were denied almost 17 years ago against Costa Rica's Saprissa, a duel in which a top feline generation was left with the desire to achieve international success and play in the Club World Cup.

The one to blame for that disaster was the Dragón Morado of the then coach Hernán Medford, who was in charge of Jorge Vergara's project in Costa Rica since the former owner of the Rebaño was also the owner of the Costa Rican team at the time. 

The first leg of the 2005 regional tournament, then called the Concacaf Champions Cup, was played on May 5 at the Ricardo Saprissa Stadium, where the home side won 2-0. The second leg was a 2-1 win for Pumas in a sold-out C.U. stadium, which was not enough to win on aggregate. 

Saprissa vs Pumas Prediction:

Pumas and Saprissa will now meet again in the Round of 16 of the Concachampions 2022, with the first duel this Wednesday in Costa Rica (9:30 p.m. Central Mexico time). 

The odds are in Saprissa's favor, but they will not be able to achieve a difference of more than two goals against Pumas, who hope to win the game at home to advance to the next round and continue dreaming of winning the Concachampions. 

The odds are as follows:

Odds that Deportivo Saprissa will make its home advantage count and manage to score 

Deportivo Saprissa has a 65% chance of beating Pumas over the course of 90 minutes. This is a high probability due to the fact that this is a team that tends to be strong at home. 

Pumas' odds to beat Saprissa in the Concachampions 

As we can see in the graph, it is clear that Pumas has a lower probability of scoring than its opponent, although they behave symmetrically since the probability of scoring a goal or more for Pumas is 64.82% compared to 65% for Saprissa. 

Given these numbers, we are betting on Pumas to achieve a favorable result that will allow them to define this Concachampions tie at home by playing in their stadium. 

What System is applied to predict the outcome of Saprissa vs Pumas

At El Futbolero US, we decided to apply our own measurement system based on historical data of both teams with the help of "The Professor", knowledge of statistical patterns and Poisson distributions applicable through Python programming. 

Thanks to this we can predict the number of goals that each team can score based on historical results.

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