Barcelona vs. Inter Milan Betting Tips: Back Busquets fouls at the Nou Camp

It’s Matchday 4 in the Champions League group stage this week and one of the stand out fixtures on Wednesday comes from Spain where Barcelona take on Inter Milan. We’ve previewed the action and have provided you with two bets that we like the look of

It’s looking increasingly likely that Bayern Munich will top the Group C table with the German on nine points from three matches before a trip to Viktoria Plzen on Wednesday. That leaves Inter Milan and Barcelona the most likely teams to be fighting it out for second spot, and after their 1-0 win against the Catalans last week, Inter currently occupy that position with six points.

Barcelona currently find themselves three points behind Inter, but could jump back above them in the table with a win at the Nou Camp. It’s a big week for Xavi and his men, with this crucial European game midweek, before the first El Clasico of the campaign at the weekend. The market very much favours the home side here with odds of just 2/5 on show from bet365 for Barcelona to come away victorious. Those odds imply a 71% chance of the win for Barca, with the draw priced at 4/1, and a huge away win for Inter available at 13/2.

Moving on to team news, the hosts will be without a number of players including Ronald Araujo, Memphis Depay, Joules Kounde, Franck Kessie, Hector Bellerin and Andreas Christensen.

Simone Inzaghi also has plenty of injury concerns of his own, with Romelu Lukaku still a doubt, although he may feature from the bench. Marcelo Brozovic and Joaquin Correa will both miss out through injury.

The first selection we are backing in Barcelona can be found on Unibet under the ‘Player advanced stats’ category, where they are offering 11/10 on Sergio Busquets to commit Over 1.5 fouls in the match.

It’s been a tough group campaign so far for Barcelona and there is no denying that they cannot afford to slip up and lose this match with a fixture against Bayern Munich still to come. A player that needs no introduction when it comes to the ‘dark arts’ is Busquets who racked up 12 yellow cards in La Liga last season. 

The Spaniard has averaged 1.5 fouls per game in the league this campaign and 1.7 per game in the Champions League across his six matches last season. Busquets has also made 2+ fouls in four of his last five matches for the club he has been at since 2005 and with the importance of this match in mind, 11/10 looks a good price for him to make it five in six against Inter.

Last week when previewing the reverse fixture in Milan we advised backing Hakan Calhanoglu to have 1+ shot on target and be carded at 9/1 for which he truly obliged, giving us a nice profit on the evening. Once again we are focussing our attention on the Turkish International, this time backing him to score from outside the area at 16/1 with bet365.

Calhanoglu managed two shots on target last week against Barcelona, both of which came from outside the area, one of those resulting in a goal. Last season he scored four Serie A goals from outside the box, with over 70% of his attempts coming from distance. This term that percentage has risen to just over 81%, and with this same bet as short as 9/1 elsewhere, it looks a solid price over at bet365. It’s also worth noting that Barcelona have failed to keep a clean sheet in all three of their Champions League matches so far in 2022/2023.