Champions League odds, prediction, picks: Real Sociedad vs. PSG match for Tuesday, March 5

Real Sociedad vs. PSG Odds

Tuesday, March 5, 3 p.m. ET, Paramount+

Odds via bet365. Get up-to-the-minute Soccer odds here.

Real Sociedad

Even though Real Sociedad have been struggling offensively this year, they are a really good out of possession side and they showcased that in the first leg against PSG.

Real Sociedad are an elite team out of possession because of their compact defensive shape and their pressing. They are the No. 1 team in La Liga in PPDA and progressive passes & dribbles allowed. They will press out of a 4-4-2 and the main principles are to not allow teams to play through the center parts of the pitch. They’ve done this to great success in La Liga, allowing just 0.98 npxG per 90 minutes. Against PSG in the first leg, they limited them to just eight deep completions and were able to force eight high turnovers.

The question is are they good enough offensively to overcome a two goal deficit? The simple answer to that is no. They were only able to create 0.6 xG in the first leg even though they had numerous transition opportunities. They have a lot of great dribblers in their side, but when they do break in direct attacks it's usually pretty slow, as they put an emphasis on maintaining possession after they win the ball.

They've been in bad form recently in front of net. They've only created 9.8 expected goals in their last 10 matches in all competitions and in their last seven La Liga matches they've only created one big scoring chance.

PSG

In the first leg, PSG did what they usually do under Luis Enrique. They tried building out of the back and quite frankly they didn't have much success doing that. If you look at PSG's pass map from their first leg, it was a lot of passes in their own final third with a lot of long balls up to Mbappe, which is back to how they played before Luis Enrique took over. My guess is they will try that same approach in the second leg, but the problem is Enrique is stuck in his ways and always wants his team to play out of the back with short passes to play through the opponents pressure, which plays right into what Sociedad do successfully.

In Ligue 1 this season, PSG are averaging 64.9% possession, 22.5 10-plus pass sequences per match and have one of the longest sequence times in Europe's big five leagues. That is wonderful, but it's one thing to do that against teams in the bottom half of the table of Ligue 1, but as we saw in the first leg, trying that against an elite out of possession team doesn't really work.

Out of possession, PSG have become a much better team than in the past because of their counter pressing. However, given the situation they are in having a two goal advantage, I am not really sure they are going to want to play aggressively and will most likely sit in a passive defensive block, which will be the best plan of attack against Real Sociedad.

Real Sociedad vs PSG

Prediction

This match is set up to quite frankly be kind of snooze-fest. I know Real Sociedad are down two goals and need to play aggressively, but that goes against everything they try to do tactically.

Real Sociedad are one of the highest reliance teams on deep ball circulation in Europe's top five leagues. They are not a team that can just suddenly flip a switch and start playing like Liverpool. For PSG, they just need to sit an a low defensive block and see this match out. There is no need for them to play aggressively out of possession, which is going to create a very slow-paced match.

There were only 2.16 expected goals created in the first leg and I am expecting another low-event type of match in the second leg, so I like the value on the under.

Pick: Under 2.5 (-108 via FanDuel)