The Cypriot Champions are making their Champions League debut and could hardly have started any better racing into a 3-0 half time lead in the first leg and winning 6-2 to continue their unbelievable run under their Russian owner Vladimir Fedorov who has been at the helm for two years and their Belarusian head coach Aleksey Shpilevsky. He has coached the team for two seasons, in the first, they finished 4th in the league, their joint highest ever position and qualified for Europe for the first time (lost in their first round in the Europa Conference League). In the second they won the title and the rest is history and this is all a massive success story in double quick  for Aris. They have a large squad, which includes only a handful of Cypriot players, with some 18 other countries supplying players, but they have clearly gelled.

 

BATE will be very familiar to long term readers as they used to be a regular early season Champions League fixture in my notes and they won their league 13 years in a row between 2006 and 2018, but not once subsequently, finishing runner up in the next three years , third last season and placing 5th currently . They made the group stage of the CL FIVE times and the Europa League on four occasions all between 2008-2019 in what will always be their golden generation. We could go into the reasons for their (relative) downfall in greater detail, but it doesn't really matter, they are not going to qualify, however, they have huge European experience, a long proud history and are not going to want to face further humiliation . Aris have not played much on the road in Europe, just once and lost that 3-0 to a much weaker team than BATE. The game is not being played in Belarus, for obvious reasons, with Mezokovesd in Hungary the venue, but BATE played their previous round home leg here and won 2-0 and it is still a trip into the unknown for Aris.  Small bet on BATE to restore a little self esteem .

 

 

Good luck!