Real Betis vs Chelsea: Conference League Final Prediction

Having secured UEFA Champions League football for next season, can Chelsea cap a successful end to their campaign with silverware when they face Real Betis in the UEFA Conference League final?

Real Betis vs Chelsea Stats: The Key Insights

Chelsea are the Opta supercomputer’s favourites to lift the UEFA Conference League trophy, with a 51.1% chance of victory inside 90 minutes.

Chelsea could become the first team to ever win four different major UEFA tournaments, having previously won the Cup Winners’ Cup, Champions League and Europa League.

Spanish sides have won each of their last nine major European finals against English opponents. The last Premier League team to win against a La Liga side was Liverpool against Alavés in the 2001 UEFA Cup (5-4).

The second of three major European finals takes place at the Tarczyński Arena in Wrocław on Wednesday, with Chelsea hoping to cap their fourth-place finish in the Premier League with silverware when they face Real Betis in the UEFA Conference League showpiece.

Chelsea were always expected to get this far, given the huge resources at their disposal, and they could even afford to leave Cole Palmer out of their league-phase squad in the first half of the season.

Since progressing from the first round, Enzo Maresca’s Blues have come up against FC Copenhagen (won 3-1 on aggregate), Legia Warsaw (4-2) and Djurgården (5-1) – hardly a who’s who of European heavyweights.

But Chelsea have taken the competition seriously and now have history in their sights. Having won the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup (1971, 1998), the UEFA Champions League (2012, 2021) and the UEFA Europa League (2013, 2019), they could become the first team in history to win four different major UEFA tournaments.

They will bound into Wednesday’s final after ensuring their two-year exile from the Champions League will end in 2025-26. Levi Colwill’s tap-in from a Pedro Neto cross was enough to down Nottingham Forest on the final day of the Premier League season, meaning Maresca’s debut campaign has been a measured success, regardless of Wednesday’s result.

Including Maresca, each of the last seven Chelsea managers to take charge of a major European final have done so in their first season at the club, and five of the previous six were victorious.

Gianluca Vialli won the 1997-98 Cup Winners’ Cup final, Roberto Di Matteo won the 2011-12 Champions League, Rafael Benítez won 2012-13 UEFA Europa League, Maurizio Sarri won the 2018-19 Europa League and Thomas Tuchel won the 2020-21 Champions League. The only manager to lose their final was Avram Grant, in the 2007-08 Champions League.

Chelsea have reached the final in eye-catching style, with their 38 goals in this edition of the Conference League already a single-season record for the competition, which was introduced in 2021.

Chelsea have had 16 different scorers in the competition, more than any other team, with Marc Guiu’s six goals making him their most-prolific player ahead of Christopher Nkunku on five. With the former only just returning from injury and the latter likely to leave, Nicolas Jackson should return to lead the line after being suspended in the Premier League.

Only Celje’s Svit Seslar (eight) has more assists in the competition this season than Enzo Fernández (five), despite the Argentine playing just 251 minutes. Of all players to have played 250 minutes this term, Fernández has the best minutes-per-goal-involvement rate (one every 42 mins).

Chelsea have used the Conference League to rotate, using more players than any other club (36), but other than Filip Jörgensen replacing Robert Sánchez in goal, they should be close to full strength on Wednesday.

Standing between the Blues and the trophy are Real Betis, who will play Europa League football in 2025-26 regardless of Wednesday’s outcome, having finished sixth in La Liga under former Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini.

This will be Pellegrini’s first major European final, thus becoming just the second Chilean coach to reach one after Fernando Riera with Benfica in the 1963 European Cup (lost 2-1 to AC Milan).

Betis have arguably had a tougher route to the final than Chelsea, beating Gent (3-1 on aggregate), Vitória Guimaraes (6-2), Jagiellonia Białystok (3-1) and Fiorentina (4-3) after finishing 15th in the league phase.

Their push for a first European trophy has been turbocharged by the loan signing of Antony, who endured a miserable spell at Manchester United but has seven goal involvements in eight Conference League outings for Betis (four goals, three assists). He only scored twice – and failed to provide an assist – in 17 European appearances for United.

Cédric Bakambu will be another threat for Chelsea to look out for, with only Jagiellonia Białystok’s Afimico Pululu (eight) bettering his seven Conference League goals this term. Bakambu also has two assists in his nine outings, with only Seslar (10) having more goal involvements in this edition.

Real Betis vs Chelsea Head-to-Head

Betis are playing in their first major European final. They are the 12th Spanish club to reach one, and first since Villarreal in 2020-21 to be playing their maiden final; the Yellow Submarine won the Europa League on penalties against Man Utd on that occasion.

They have won just one of their eight meetings with English opponents in all competitions (one draw, six defeats), though that victory did come against Chelsea in the 2005-06 Champions League.

Chelsea, meanwhile, have lost three of their last four games against Spanish sides in UEFA competitions (one win), all against Real Madrid in the Champions League between 2022 and 2023. That is as many defeats as they suffered in their previous 29 against Spanish sides (11 wins, 15 draws, excluding Super Cup).

If Chelsea are to lift the trophy, they will have to end English teams’ hoodoo against Spanish opposition in finals.

Spanish sides have won each of their last nine major European finals against English opponents. The last Premier League team to win against a La Liga side was Liverpool against Alavés, in the 2001 UEFA Cup (5-4).

Real Betis vs Chelsea: Conference League Final Prediction

The Opta supercomputer is backing Chelsea to cap their campaign with silverware, giving them a 51.1% chance of winning the final within 90 minutes.

Betis are assigned a 25.4% chance of victory, with 23.5% of simulations requiring extra-time and potentially penalties to crown the champions.

Opta Power Rankings

The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.

Ahead of kick-off on Wednesday, here are the Opta Power Rankings for both sides.

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