Chelsea beat Man City in the Champions League final; Villarreal saw off Man United in the Europa League to claim their first ever European title; Chelsea won the Super Cup in 1998; The legendary teams will meet at Windsor Park in Belfast, kick-off 8pm
This is the 18th consecutive UEFA Super Cup game involving either an English or Spanish team, with 2003 being the last time neither were involved (Porto 0-1 AC Milan). Across the previous 17 UEFA Super Cup games in this run, the trophy has been lifted by a Spanish side on 11 occasions, and just twice by those from England.
Chelsea
Manager Thomas Tuchel faces a selection dilemma for Wednesday’s clash with Villarreal as he chooses between first-team regulars who have recently returned from their summer breaks after featuring at Euro 2020, or fringe players who have undergone a full pre-season.
Chelsea have only lost two of their last 12 games against Spanish opponents in European competition (W5 D5), while they were unbeaten in their six encounters with Spanish sides in their successful UEFA Champions League run in 2020-21 (W4 D2).
This will be Chelsea’s 50th game against Spanish opponents in European competition (W20 D17 L12), but the first time they have ever faced Villarreal in competitive action.
2,25 are the odds at New Sportsbook Betzest for Real Madrid and 2,98 for Liverpool, to win Champions league final
Villareal
Villarreal are unbeaten in their last 15 games in European competition (W12 D3), with the most recent three coming against English opponents in last season’s UEFA Europa League. They won 2-1 on aggregate against Arsenal in the semi-final, before beating Manchester United on penalties in the final following a 1-1 draw.
will be without winger Samuel Chukwueze, who continues to recover from a hip injury sustained against Arsenal in the Europa League semi-finals, while Dani Parejo will also miss out with a calf problem.
Recent Covid concerns have also seen Unai Emery’s options narrowed, and it remains to be seen if Etienne Capoue, Francis Coquelin, Geronimo Rulli and Vicente Iborra will feature.
Villarreal head coach Unai Emery: “We are playing to win another title. It is the award of winning a brilliant Europa League and now we are facing the Champions League winner, the best club in the world. This needs to give us some extra motivation and eagerness and take it as a challenge to see where we stand this season as we are playing in the Champions League.”
Further more, few players from both teams could even take home more than the standard bonus, if competition-winning extras were part of their contracts.
The team that goes on to win the Champions League will earn around £70million in prize money.
If you can’t choose the right Chelsea vs Villarreal bet, take a look at some of our favourite betting predictions and tips for this match:
It’s hard to decide whether Chelsea winning the Champions League was a bigger surprise than Villarreal winning Europa League, but that turn of events will pit these two clubs against each other for the first time ever. Chelsea had better results in friendly matches than Villarreal and it’s obvious that they are the better team, so our prediction is for Chelsea to win this game.
While we expect Chelsea to win this match, we also think that both teams can score in this one. Both teams have scored in all three preparation games played by Chelsea, while the same is true for three of the four friendly matches that Villarreal played over the past few weeks.
Since we expect Villarreal to score at least one goal in this game, it’s logical to expect that goal to come from the team’s top goalscorer last season and one of the best Spanish strikers at this moment. Gerard Moreno scored 23 goals in La Liga last season and added 7 more goals in the Europa League, so if anyone scores for Villarreal it will most likely be him.
If you are searching for the top Chelsea vs Villarreal odds, check our list of odds from some of the best UK bookmakers:
Winning the Champions League for the second time in their history obviously made the last season for Chelsea one of their best ever, but the Blues also had other respectable results. For example, they also reached the FA Cup final, where they lost to Leicester City in a thrilling match. In the league, Chelsea struggled to get into the Top 4, but they did it in the end thanks to Leicester failing to win their game in the last round. When it comes to changes that Chelsea made during the summer transfer window, the most notable are Giroud leaving and Lukaku coming back to Stanford Bridge in a huge transfer.
The last season was truly historic for Villarreal since they’ve managed to win their first-ever European trophy with a win over Manchester United in the Europa League final. However, that effort did affect the team’s performance in La Liga since Villarreal ended the season in the 7th place in the standings. Still, their win in Europa League secured them a spot in the Champions League this season and a chance to fight with Chelsea for the UEFA Super Cup. The team mostly remained the same, but Villarreal did add a couple of big names like Juan Foyth and Boulaye Dia.