The Champions League group stage resumes this week with 16 matches over Tuesday and Wednesday. We aren’t going to cover them all, instead focusing on five matches that have been viewed as closer than others according to various prognosticators.

At the moment, Manchester City remains the favorite to win the tournament overall, and thanks to perhaps the weakest group in the draw, they currently have over a 99% chance of reaching the Round of 16, and a 30% chance of winning it all. They also have what appears to be the most lopsided match this week (87% chance of winning), hosting Dinamo Zagreb at Etihad Stadium on Tuesday night.

This week only has one match where the spread between the two clubs chances of winning are less than 10% – Valencia hosting Ajax – and we’ll be previewing that one tomorrow. Our next match preview happens to be between the other two clubs from Group B (our first preview this week was the match between Tottenham Hotspur and Bayern Munich), with Red Star Belgrade playing host to Olympiacos, with the match kicking off from Red Star Stadium in Belgrade, Serbia at 9pm local (3pm EST) on Tuesday night.

Like we did with our Matchday 1 previews, we’ll cover how things are going for the clubs back home, and recap what happened on Matchday 1 for both clubs. We’ll wrap up with a look at the history between the two clubs – if they have any – and what the odds look like for the match and beyond.

Without further ado, here’s a look at the clubs:

Domestic League Performance

We’ve taken note of Red Star on a couple of different occasions over the past year. They were our first two-time claimant of the “Small Club of the Week” for their performance in last season’s Champions League, but they also attracted our attention because of their stellar performance in the Serbian SuperLiga. Between their Yugoslav and Serbian competitions, Red Star boasts 30 league titles – including the four of the past six SuperLiga titles – and 24 cup titles, making them the most successful club in Serbian (and Yugoslavian) history.

This season has started out just as well for them, tied at the top of the league with 24 points, with one fewer match than TSC Bačka Topola, the club they are currently tied with. They are 8-0-1 through nine matches played, the lone loss to rival Partizan on the road following their last Champions League match.

We covered Olympiacos’ history in the Greek Premier League in our preview of their previous match against the Spurs, so we won’t dive into it too much. However, since that match on 18 September, they’ve played just two matches in league play (1-1-0), and currently find themselves at the top of the table.

European History

Red Star has found success in European competition, and remain the only club from Eastern Europe to have won the Champions League, which they did when it was still called the European cup in 1991, defeating French club Marseille on penalty kicks in the final. They were also the runners-up to Borussia Mönchengladbach 1978-79 UEFA Cup (now Europa League).

More recently, they have reached the group stage the past two seasons, having journeyed through four rounds of qualification each season. Last season, they finished in fourth place in their group, albeit with a win at home against Liverpool, the eventual Champions League winner. This season, they advanced with wins over Sūduva Marijampolė, HJK Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Young Boys, compiling a 2-5-1 record along the way. On Matchday 1, they lost 3-0 to Bayern Munich in Germany, and currently find themselves in a distant fourth place in the group.

I covered Olympiacos’ European history in depth previously, and in their Matchday 1 tilt against Tottenham Hostpur, they came from behind to force a draw from Athens, with Mathieu Valbuena equalizing on a penalty kick in the 54th minute. They are currently third in the group, behind the Spurs due to the away-goal tiebreaker.

This Matchup

This will be the first time the clubs have met in European competition. Red Star has a 6-0-5 record in previous matches against clubs from Greece, while Olympiacos is 2-1-1 in limited action against Serbian clubs, including a win against Partizan in Serbia during the third qualifying round of the 2017-18 Champions League.

According to FiveThirtyEight, Olympiacos is favored to win, doing so in 45% of their simulations despite being the road club. Red Star is given a 3-in-10 chance of prevailing at home, with a draw expected in a quarter of matches. My bias towards the club has me favoring Red Star personally, but Olympiacos was very impressive in the comeback, and holding on, against the Spurs three weeks ago, so I can understand why they are favored in this one as well.

With the top two clubs in the group expected to stay that way, the matchups between these two clubs could end up determining who claims third place, and a trip to Europa League’s knockout stage. Their rematch on 11 December from Athens may end up being more important in the end than this match, but we are still a long way away from December.

Until next time…

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