Kairat Almaty vs UE Engordany
Europa League First qualifying round
Date: Thursday, 19th July 2018
Kick-off at 14:00 UK/ 15:00 CET
Venue: Almaty Ortalyk Stadion (Almaty)
Kairat thrashed Engordany 3-0 in the reverse leg and are clear favourites to repeat the same at home on Thursday.
On top of the obvious difference in quality, Kairat’s players should be in a much better physical condition given they are midway through the season in the Premier League.
- HT/FT- Kairat/Kairat @ 1.40 odd.
- Over 3.5 ft goals at 1.66 odd.
Kairat Almaty vs Engordany Key Stats
Almaty haven’t lost a home game in Champions League or Europa League since the 2-0 defeat to Red Star Belgrade in their debut campaign in 2002.
They won in 9 of the 13 home games since and scored 2 or more goals in 8 of them.
This is Engordany’s debut campaign in a Europa League or Champions League qualifying round.
Coming through the preliminary rounds, the Andorran football club conceded 6 goals in 3 matches so far.
Kairat Almaty vs Engordany Head-to-head (h2h)
The 3-0 win at Andorra la Vella last week is Kairat’s only h2h meeting with Engordany.
Kairat Almaty vs Engordany Match Preview
Kazakhstani football has been in huge expansion over the last couple of years mainly because of Astana’s successes in continental competitions. Nevertheless, it’s not only Astana anymore as the champions have super strong challengers in the likes of Kairat.
The Almaty side are enjoying a strong run in this term of the Premier League as they sit just six points behind Astana with two games in hand on table-toppers, meaning they could move level on points with domestic heavyweights in case of two wins in these ties.
Kairat will thus be enormous favourites to keep such a strong spell of form going in Europa League where they are about to take on Andorran Engordany in the initial round.
Engordany had to feature the preliminary round of the competition in last two weeks. They barely went past San Marino’s Folgore 3-2 on aggregate there and it’s really hard to see them stay competitive to incomparably stronger opposition here.
