Good Morning ☀️,

It’s Lucas here, your Chief Predictions Officer at What Are the Odds?

This weekend, we’ve got a couple of big pre-season finals going down as the French Super Cup and English Community Shield come to a close. So let’s get straight into it.

What’s ahead in today’s edition of What Are the Odds?:

• This weekend’s match schedule. 🗓️

• Our top 3 picks for the weekend ahead. ✅

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This weekend, we’ve got a packed schedule of matches coming up, including two big finals — the French Super Cup and English Community Shield. (Note: all dates and times are in CEST)

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 English Community Shield

Sunday 16 Aug

• 16:00 — Arsenal - Man City

🇫🇷 French Super Cup

Sunday 16 Aug

• 20:45 — Lens vs PSG

🇧🇷 Brazilian Serie A (Round 23)

Saturday 15 Aug

• 21:30 — Fluminense vs Palmeiras

• 23:30 — Athletico Paranaense vs Red Bull Bragantino

Sunday 16 Aug

• 02:00 — Sao Paulo vs Coritiba PR

• 16:00 — Chapecoense vs Bahia

• 21:00 — Atletico Mineiro vs Gremio RS

• 21:00 — Vasco Da Gama RJ vs Santos

• 23:30 — Mirassol SP vs Flamengo RJ

• 23:30 — Vitoria BA vs Botafogo RJ

🇪🇸 Spanish LaLiga (Round 1)

Saturday 15 Aug

• 19:30 — Alaves vs Getafe

• 21:30 — Sevilla vs Rayo Vallecano

Sunday 16 Aug

• 17:00 — Racing Santander vs Villarreal

• 19:00 — Espanyol vs Levante

🇮🇹 Italian Copa Italia (Playoffs Round Of 64)

Friday 14 Aug

• 18:00 — Parma vs Catania

• 18:30 — Cagliari vs US Arezzo

• 20:45 — SSD Monza vs AS Avellino

• 21:15 — Fiorentina vs Benevento Calcio

Saturday 15 Aug

• 18:00 — Catanzaro vs FC Sudtirol

• 18:30 — Udinese vs Padova Calcio

• 20:45 — Venezia FC vs Modena

• 21:15 — Torino vs Carrarese Calcio

Sunday 16 Aug

• 18:00 — Frosinone vs Juve Stabia

• 18:30 — Genoa vs Ascoli

• 20:45 — Verona vs Virtus Entella

• 21:15 — Lazio vs Mantova

Want to get the best odds on these matches?

⚽ Arsenal vs Man City
🏟️ English Community Shield
📅 Sunday 16 August; 16:00 (CEST)

• Top 3 Stats:

  • City won the last two competitive meetings between these two (including a final) and three of the last five overall.

  • Arsenal conceded just 0.71 goals per game last season (the lowest in Europe’s top five leagues) versus City’s 0.92. Arsenal’s +44 goal difference edged City’s +42 almost entirely on defense, not attack.

  • Arsenal scored a record 19 goals from corners (25 from set-pieces overall), the most in Premier League history.

• CXSports says: Technically, Arsenal were the better team over the ten months of last season — 85 points to 78, a defense that leaked just 0.71 goals a game against City’s 0.92, and a +44 goal difference that beat City’s +42 on the back of a rock solid defense. And let’s not forget that they managed a full 19 clean sheets went the whole season without so much as conceding a penalty. However, that’s just a league table — i.e., a marathon result. This game here is a single winner-takes-all sprint.
  
  Unfortunately for Arsenal, in the sprints that have actually mattered lately, City keeps crossing the line first. They won both of the last two meetings between these two, and the most recent of those wins was a 2-0 in a cup final — the exact format we’re looking at right here. In fact, the last time Arsenal properly got the better of Man City (a massive 5-1 thrashing), is now a whole year and a half in the rear-view mirror. Since then, City’s been the one with the upper hand in this fixture.
  
  The pre-season also doesn’t speak that highly of Arsenal. They stumbled through August — beaten 3-1 at Betis, beaten 3-2 at home by Dortmund, and only just scraping past Como on penalties. Meanwhile, City strung together 3-1 wins over Atletico Madrid and a K-League XI. And they welcomed Haaland (a man who scored 27 league goals last year) back to full training in time to start.
  
  With that said, there is one potential stumbling block in the City camp — this is Enzo Maresca’s first competitive match as manager replacing a coach who ran the place for a decade, with Silva and Stones gone and Rodri’s future unsettled. And the reality is, new managers rarely arrive fully fluent, and season-openers are where that rust tends to show best. Of course, Arsenal isn’t without its own potential problems. William Saliba (the key man of its record defense) has a fitness doubt. And their 0.71-goals-conceded machine is a different, more permeable thing without him.
  
  So where does that leave us? Well, this will probably be a tight one decided on slim margins that might ultimately go to City. Yes, Arsenal’s record 19 corner-goals give them a live, repeatable route to score, even in a low-chance grind like this one will likely be. And Cardiff is at least neutral turf that neutralizes City’s recent Etihad dominance (City scored 13 and conceded 4 in their last five home league meetings with Arsenal). But Haaland is the single most decisive player on the pitch — a one-man third of City’s output — and he’s more than capable of giving City a response to any corner-goal antics. Combine that with the recent history between these two (which is simply too lopsided to ignore), and it would seem the most reasonable team to back here is Manchester City, even if there’s a non-trivial chance that this ends all tied up after 90 minutes and gets dragged to penalties.

• Score prediction: 1-2 for Man City

Bet Option #1

• Bet: Man City Victory

• Odds Range: 2.30-2.77

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Both Teams to Score (Yes)

• Odds Range: 1.53-1.71

⚽ Lens vs PSG
🏟️ French Super Cup
📅 Sunday 16 August; 20:45 (CEST)

• Top 3 Stats:

  • PSG has won all 13 Trophées des Champions they’ve contested since 2013, and the last 4 in a row.

  • PSG beat Lens 2-0 at this exact stadium three months ago.

  • PSG is better at both ends — it averaged 2.18 goals per game to Lens’s 1.94 while only conceding 0.85 to Lens’s 1.03.

• CXSports says: PSG has won every Trophée des Champions it’s contested since 2013, four of them consecutively, and they arrive as the champions of Europe for the second year running. Lens, as good as they are, have played in this match exactly once before, way back in 1998, and lost it to this very opponent.
  
  And the more recent numbers point in the same direction. Over the 34 games of last season, these two were the two best sides in France — PSG first on 76 points, Lens a respectable second on 70, a six-point gap that made for one of the closest title races in years. But, as close as it was, it was clear PSG didn’t finish ahead by accident. PSG scored 74 goals to Lens’s 66 (2.18 per game against 1.94) while only conceding 29 to Lens’s 35. In other words, PSG’s better at both ends. And when that’s expressed in terms of goal difference, the difference becomes stark — PSG finished with a goal difference of +45 while Lens finished with +31.
  
  Recent head-to-heads only reinforce this further. PSG won both league meetings last season by an identical 2-0, including the title-decider at this very ground in May, where they kept a clean sheet on enemy soil even with the pressure of having the championship on the line. And there’s more to that victory than first meets the eye. At the winter break, Lens’s defense was the best in the division. Yet PSG went on to put two goals past that home defense and, in doing so, solved the toughest backline in France.
  
  Finally, Lens will also have to contend with the fact that they’re breaking in a new manager (Dino Toppmoller) after Pierre Sage left for Crystal Palace. And while new managers can occasionally conjure a chaotic, front-footed opening night, any such chaos might be for nothing given just how tight PSG is in defense.
  
  As such, we expect PSG to take this one. Lens will likely put up a decently competitive effort, and may even lead or hold level on early adrenaline and crowd. But ultimately, PSG’s superior finishing (that extra quarter-goal per game) and their history in this fixture will probably tell over the full 90 minutes.

• Score prediction: 1-2 for PSG

Bet Option #1

• Bet: PSG Victory

• Odds Range: 1.56-1.80

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Both Teams to Score (Yes)

• Odds Range: 1.56-1.67

⚽ Fiorentina vs Benevento Calcio
🏟️ Italian Copa Italia
📅 Friday 14 August; 21:15 (CEST)

• Top 3 Stats:

  • Fiorentina played 2025-26 in Serie A (1st tier); Benevento in Serie C (3rd tier). Even after winning promotion, Benevento will start next season in Serie B, a level below Fiorentina.

  • Benevento’s conceded just 0.72 goals per game (28 in 39) and kept 18 clean sheets, although that was in Serie C, well below this level.

  • Fiorentina’s Moise Kean scored 8 league goals while playing in an awful team last year. The year before, when he was playing with a functioning side, he scored 19. Benevento’s top scorer (Salvemini) managed just 15 in the third division.

• CXSports says: In terms of raw stats, Benevento come in looking like the better team. 1.87 goals scored per game against Fiorentina’s 1.08, a defense that leaked just 0.72 per game and posted 18 clean sheets against the Fiorentina’s 12, and a goal difference of +45 next to Fiorentina’s −9. But those numbers aren’t directly comparable.
  
  While Benevento looks better, they built their stats playing in Serie C, Italy’s third tier — a full two divisions below the Serie A opposition they’ll be facing this Friday night. So when we see Fiorentina’s relatively tepid 1.08 goals per game, we need to remember that was built against the likes of Inter, Napoli and the rest of the best defenses in the country, while Benevento’s “huge” results were built against defenders from two rungs down the ladder.
  
  Beyond the division gap, Fiorentina also holds the edge in terms of individual talent. Moise Kean, Fiorentina’s centre-forward, scored 8 league goals last year in a team that finished 15th and sacked its manager after ten winless games, while the year before, in a functioning side, he scored 19 in the league and 25 in all competitions. Meanwhile, Benevento’s top scorer, Francesco Salvemini, only put away 15 against Serie C goalkeepers. And the real kicker is that Fiorentina’s preseason suggests their recent reboot under new manager Fabio Grosso has brought some new life with it — a 1-0 win over Watford, and a 2-2 draw with Real Madrid.
  
  The historical head-to-head, while admittedly thin, also favors Fiorentina — three wins from five, including a 2-1 Coppa Italia win the last time these two met in this competition.
  
  As such, we expect Fiorentina to control the tempo here, break through before the first hour’s over, and then add a second with a small chance of Benevento managing a consolation goal later on.

• Score prediction: 2-1 for Fiorentina

Bet Option #1

• Bet: Fiorentina Victory

• Odds Range: 1.20-1.28

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Over/Under (Over 1.5)

• Odds Range: 1.13-1.22

Make your sportsbook work for you!

That’s it for today. We’ll be back next week as we look ahead to the next round of UEFA Champions League qualifications.

Until then, enjoy the football.