Benfica vs Barcelona Prediction: 21/1/2025

Benfica continue to be in the top three in Portugal. Lately, however, they have been hot or cold. They lost two league matches between late 2024 into the new year, falling 1-0 to Sporting and 2-1 at home to Braga, but recovered with a rather quick 3-0 home revenge against Braga in the semifinal of the League Cup just a few days later.

The League Cup final over the weekend of January 11 provides Benfica with an opportunity to redeem themselves against Sporting after their defeat in the league. In the Champions League, Benfica are also a win away from breaking into the top eight to keep their hopes of direct qualification to the round of 16 alive. Yet, their latest outing, a goalless draw against Bologna – a side yet to win or score more than one goal in the competition – was anything but encouraging.

Barça themselves have had their struggles in La Liga, having been knocked off the top after an early nine-point cushion over nearest pursuers Real Madrid with their Clasico win back in October. In the new year, Barcelona played in the Spanish Supercopa, whereby they made it through to the final by beating Athletic Bilbao 2-0 in the semis. Now the team hopes to regain the Supercopa title that went to Real Madrid last season.

In the Champions League, Barcelona has been having a great run and lies second in the group stages behind Liverpool. Their campaign has comprised impressive victories as a 4-1 win against Bayern Munich to the dramatic 3-2 victory in front of last year’s finalist, Borussia Dortmund. They also defeated Brest 3-0 in this phase of the competition.
For Benfica, an injury with Tiago Gouveia remains; Renato Sanches has returned.

The squad is otherwise at full strength to face Barcelona, with Angel Di Maria-who scored a brace in the League Cup semifinal-expected to play a key role. Former Real Madrid player Di Maria has been in decent form with six goals and three assists thus far in the league. The other players to note are Greek international Pavlidis, who has scored four times in the league and twice in the Champions League, and Turkish international Kerem Akturkoglu, who has netted three times in the Champions League.

Barcelona have registered Dani Olmo and Pau Victor for the Champions League after being given a temporary licence by the Spanish Sports Council, the CSD, but they will be missing several key players. Marc-André ter Stegen and Marc Bernal are probably out for the remainder of the season with cruciate ligament injuries, while Andreas Christensen is yet to return to action. Still, Barcelona has two of this season’s top scorers in the Champions League: Robert Lewandowski with seven goals and Raphinha with six goals and three assists.

Prediction

There is a pattern between Benfica and Barcelona that has seen few goals in their respective Champions League matches: Barcelona has gone 19 straight matches at less than 3.5 goals in the competition; likewise, Benfica has not scored more than three goals in their last 19 matches at this level. A tightly contested match, which neither team will have the upper hand in, is highly probable.

Prediction: Benfica 1-1 Barcelona