Europa League: Eagles Fly over East London

West Ham United vs Eintracht Frankfurt

We’re at the Europa League semi-final stage, folks, and on Thursday night the London Stadium will be packed as West Ham welcome Eintracht Frankfurt for the first leg of a mouth-watering clash.  

David Moyes’ Hammers beat Lyon to make it to the last four while Oliver Glasner’s Eintracht pulled off the biggest of all Europa League 2022 results by dumping Barcelona out of the competition, and they will be determined to extend their run in the hope of securing European football next term.

The Eagles have had a modest Bundesliga campaign and are in ninth place, ten points behind a European place with three games to play, and so Europa glory remains their clear focus.

In seventh place in the Premier League, it’s beginning to look like a Europa Conference League place is the Hammers’ best hope, and so they too are reaching for a higher prize.     

The Europa League 2022 betting odds are backing Moyes’ boys at odds of 1.56 to make it through to the final, with Eintracht at 2.42. The victors will play the winner of RB Leipzig and Scottish club Rangers, and it’s the Bundesliga side which is leading the odds to win the tournament, with West Ham in pursuit.    

But nobody will be ruling out the Eagles after they beat the Blaugrana in the last round.      

Talking Points

West Ham hoping for a big finish

An East/West London clash with Chelsea on Sunday was a tough warm up for this Europa clash and, after it looked for so long that the Hammers would snatch a vital point, it all went pear-shaped in the last five minutes.

First, centre-back Craig Dawson hauled down Romelu Lukaku to give away a penalty, but even then West Ham thought they’d got away with it when Jorginho poked his spot-kick straight at Lukasz Fabianski. But as the match went into injury time, Marcos Alonso crossed and Christian Pulisic fired in a last-gasp winner.

The Hammers have been flirting with a top-four place all season, but they have recently stuttered and there is a danger their domestic campaign is about to fizzle out. Eighth-placed Wolves would have drawn level had they not lost at Burnley on Sunday and they still have a game in hand.

So not only is Moyes pushing for a fast finish in the Premier League, he wants to keep up his club’s momentum in Europe. West Ham were simply magnificent in their quarter-final tie against Ligue 1 side Lyon. Having drawn the first game after Aaron Cresswell had been sent off, they flew to France and dismantled their hosts with goals from midfielder Declan Rice, Dawson and attacker Jarrod Bowen.

Bowen and Rice have scored three goals each in the competition while the excellent Dawson is always a danger at set pieces, and those three will be the first names on the Hammers team sheet.  

Kostic is Eintracht’s danger man  

Serbian winger Filip Kostic is the player Moyes will have watched the most in his preparation for this game as, while Eintracht have no shortage of quality, Kostic is the man who can create mayhem in opposing defences.

Kostic is tied for sixth in the Bundesliga with nine assists and has made five assists and scored three goals in this competition. A flying left winger, he has 45 international appearances for Serbia and he was the player who terrorised Barcelona in the quarter-finals.

After drawing 1-1 in Frankfurt, Kostic converted a fourth-minute penalty and added another midway through the second half after Rafael Borre blasted in the second. Injury-time goals from Sergio Busquets and Memphis Depay, with a 101^st-minute penalty, only reduced the margin to 4-3 as the Eagles silenced the Camp Nou crowd.    

But Frankfurt’s league form has been poor of late, they recently hosted top-four hopefuls Freiburg and lost 2-1, before losing 2-0 away to Union Berlin, and they come into the game on the back of a hard-fought 2-2 draw with Hoffenheim.

History

As three-time winners of the FA Cup and twice champions of England’s second tier, this is West Ham’s biggest adventure in European football, while the Eagles were UEFA Cup winners in 1980 and have also been runners up in the Champions League, in 1960. Frankfurt have been big players on the domestic front too, as Bundesliga champions in 1959 and five times DFB Pokal winners.     

This is the first meeting between these two clubs but, in terms of recent form, the Hammers have a slight edge with two wins, two draws and two losses in the last six games, meanwhile Eintracht have won just one, drawn three and lost two.    

Betting Tip

West Ham are favourites to win the first leg, at SBOTOP odds of 1.93, the draw is at 3.20 and Eintracht at 3.64, and as recent form and Europa progress for both sides have shown, this could go either way.

I think we’ll see an entertaining tussle, with goals but not an avalanche.

 

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