Football is the most popular team sport all over the world. However, the best teams are found in Europe. They have multi-million-dollar budgets, the richest histories and the biggest names in the world of sports playing for them. But having the name and the status doesn’t make them immune to huge upset losses. In this article, we teamed up with Lazybu guru to list a number of European football teams that frequently go into matches as the favourite but fall prey to a hungrier, luckier or just better-prepared underdog opponent.
Manchester United
Everyone knows that Man United is one of the best-known and most decorated clubs in the world. However, their illustrious history is also marked with the grief of many sport betting fans. Overall, Manchester Red Devils have not been a winning team for the better part of the last decade. They are always competitive, but have fallen behind their rivals City and the likes of Chelsea and even Tottenham. There have been many heartfelt losses like the 1-2 against Bristol City in 2017 or the 4-0 stampeding they received at the hands of League One opponents MK Dons in 2014.
AC Milan
Apart from more significant struggles amidst financial uncertainty in the past decade, AC Milan is called the most successful football club of all time (depends on the counting, of course). It doesn’t have that many tragic losses on the big stage but two examples that we’ll list should be enough to help you understand why AC Milan can be labelled as the Ultimate unpredictable favourite. Back in 2004 UEFA Champions League ¼ finals, they thrashed Deportivo 4-1 in the first leg. Despite the seemingly insurmountable deficit, Deportivo annihilated the super strong Milan 4-0 to move on. And of course you have the 2005 UEFA Champions League final against Liverpool the next year…
Manchester City
City is consistently great in the Premier League. However it is always outmatched by teams with a much smaller budget and less stars in the Champions League. Even though they sometimes seem invincible on all fronts, you can see why they haven’t won the Champions League in the games like the 2-3 loss at the hands of Crystal Palace in late 2018.
PSG
Just like Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain have all the money in the world to create a star-studded lineup. And they do. This ensures smooth sailing in the local championship – Ligue 1, but the team is super inconsistent, when it comes to UEFA Champions League. There’s one game in particular that stands out – the 2nd leg of 2017 UEFA Champions League Quarterfinals. With a 4-0 lead on aggregate, the French side managed to be destroyed 6-1 by FC Barcelona en route to a fiasco finish. Sport betting Parisians were definitely super disappointed.
FC Barcelona
Barca was probably the best overall team of the late 2000s’ and early to mid 2010s’. However, despite the Lightning in a Bottle type of success, they had some pretty embarrassing losses against some uninspiring opponents. There was the 1-2 loss against Kazan Rubin in the group stage of the Champions League. You can go back to 1994 and their embarrassing loss against AC Milan in the final and who could forget 1-2 loss against Celtic whilst having 89% of possession.
Final Remarks
So, you should definitely be aware when placing bets on these teams, when they are the heavy favourites. Read penalty.lt and other football blogs to keep up with the biggest upsets, news and insights on the world of football!
