Apparently Dinamo finally met an opponent who sees them as a highly successful team. Linfield players are very happy to meet "such a famous team", and there's no doubt they'll try to prove themselves here where it counts. Dinamo's scouts described Linfield as a team from the middle part of the Croatian 1st league table. But that's just being careful, because of last year's thriller against Khazar Lenkoran when Dinamo underestimated the opponent.

Linfield is almost an amateur team, similar to the teams in Croatian 2nd league. They draw their strength from the home stadium and the pressing tactics. They play physical football with direct passes and not many dribbles. A typical island team with a typical island 4-4-2 formation.

Dinamo has tons of talent, but a coward coach. His strategy is to field offensive players in a defensive formation. Basically, that means that Dinamo from time to time looks like they'll never score a goal. But I don't think it will happen this time as Dinamo plays better when visiting (the pressure in Zagreb is immense) and the new playmaker Morales, Chilean NT starter, will make it right. Make no mistake about this, most of Dinamo's players are smooth dribblers and intuitive passers. That usually works against english style of football which Linfield plays.

I don't see this as an easy match for Dinamo. Especially because Dinamo's coach closes the game down in 6oth minute (!) when leading. But Dinamo often scores easily whenever 4-5 passes are connected, and the starting 11 knows how to do that, as opposed to many times before when 2 or 3 players would be completely defensive. This is an offensive team.

The odds on Dinamo might be generous if we could have a way of knowing in which form Dinamo is. But taking AH -1 does have good value, as win by 1 goal margin is highly probable, and there's a good chance Dinamo will win by a bigger margin. We get our stake back if Dinamo wins by 1. A shy stake as this is my first pick here.

Belfast, Northern Ireland: Linfield FC - NK Dinamo Zagreb, UEFA Champions League 1st Qualification Round, July 16th 2008, 19:45 local time, 20:45 CET. Expected weather: Light rain all day, 14 °C. Expected pitch condition: Wet and fast.

Dinamo -1 AH, 1.654, 3/10, 10Bet

PICK WON

+1.962