They don’t fear Maradona

Last year it was a quite good season for Dynamo Brest, they finished in the 4th spot of Belarussian league, they won the domestic cup and they qualified for a place in Europa League. This is the second time in a raw that they play in Europa League qualifiers, last year they got eliminated from Austrian Rheindorf Altach (4-1 in aggregate). This season, Dinamo Brest won the domestic super cup (2-1 vs BATE Borisov), however their performance in Belarusian league is not so competitive. Aleksey Shpilevskiy’s team have only 6 wins in 17 games (6-8-3) and hold the 7th place of the table, far away from the European spots. 

Atromitos finished in the 4th place of Greek Super League, behind traditional strong teams, AEK, PAOK and Olympiacos. They returned in European competitions after a two year absence, for the 5th time in their history. In the most recent of these, they reached Europa League Qualifiers, but Fenerbache was too strong for the Greek team. Atromitos have no official games this season, in their preparation games they won Austria Lustenau and they drew vs AEK Athens, Zurich and Grasshopers. There are not so many changes in their roster, the most important is the end of loan of Egyptian international Amr Warda. Greek international Goalkeeper Gianniotis, Dauda and Diguiny left the team, their replacements are Megyeri (goalkeeper), Risvanis, Garoufalias and Nsikulu. The successful coach Damir Canadi stayed in Atromitos bench for a second year.

Europa League group stage is the big target for Atromitos, a team that for one more year will fight for the first spots in Greek League. Brest is not as strong as last year, they lack quality, especially in defense, actually they are one of the teams that concede more in Belarussian league. They hired Diego Maradona for president, but this definitely cannot help team’s mediocre performance, a team that their level is surely below most of Greek Super League teams. Atromitos has quite good performances in away European matches, they won in the past AZ Alkmaar, AIK Stockholm and FK Sarajevo. All these teams definitely have more quality than Brest. I believe that Atromitos will make tonight the first step to qualify to the 3rd round, draw is also an acceptable outcome for the Greek team. Away win DNB is my call.