Benfica vs. Inter Milan Betting Tips: Back hosts to take first-leg advantage

The Champions League returns on Tuesday night with a couple of juicy quarter-final first-leg matches, including Benfica vs Inter Milan at the Estádio da Luz, live on BT Sport 2 at 8pm.

Here at BettingOdds.com, we've dissected the match markets and picked out our best bets for the action.

Benfica are enjoying an extraordinary season under coach Roger Schmidt who has accumulated an 80.4% win rate from 46 matches so far, suffering just the two defeats (excluding penalties). 

Despite losing at home to rivals Porto over the weekend, Benfica hold a seven-point lead at the summit of Primeira Liga, while in Europe they are through to their first Champions League quarter-final since 2015/16.

The Eagles finished top of a testing group featuring PSG and Juventus - winning four and drawing two of their six games - then swatted aside Club Brugge 7-1 on aggregate in the last-16. 

Schmidt's side remain unbeaten in Europe and now head into the quarter-finals as the 5/6 favourites to progress to the last-four, while they have been handed odds of 6/5 to win the home leg on Tuesday night.

As for Inter Milan, they are priced at 21/20 to qualify and 11/4 to take a win back to Italy for the second-leg.

Inter finished second behind Bayern Munich in their group - relegating Barcelona to the Europa League - then edged out Porto 1-0 on aggregate to set-up a tasty tie with Benfica in what will be their first last-eight fixture in 12 years.

Simone Inzaghi's side are, however, enduring a poor pocket of form, failing to win any of their last six matches -  scoring just three goals in the process - while they've failed to triumph in their last six away games in all competitions dating back to January.

As touched upon, Benfica's form under Schmidt has been quite sensational.

His tenure to date boasts 37 wins from 46 matches, which includes the double over Juventus in the group stages.

Benfica have been victorious in 10 of their 12 Champions League matches this term - drawing the other two against PSG - and battered Club Brugge 5-1 last time out.

At odds-against, Benfica represent great value (6/5, BetUK) to win at home to an out-of-sorts Inter who are winless in six matches and without an away win in over two months.

Only Erling Haaland, Mo Salah and Kylian Mbappe have registered more goals in this season's Champions League than Benfica's Joao Mario.

The former West Ham player has notched six goals on the board to date and is currently enjoying a superb five game scoring streak in the competition, a feat I'm backing him to extend to six successive games on Tuesday night.

The winger also has 17 goals on the board in the league - joint top of the charts with teammate Goncalo Ramos - and has bagged a brace in four of his last nine league games.

Considering Mario is as short as 7/4 to add to his tally against Inter Milan, there's some cracking value to be had at 7/2 in the anytime goalscorer market with bet365.