Weekend Football Tips: Jamie’s 3.03/1 Cross-European Treble

We've made it to the end of the domestic football season and our Cross-European Treble column will once again, end up in profit. Jamie will return throughout the group stages of the World Cup with 3-3-3 columns throughout as he once more continues the hunt of picking out three winning bets at a time.

For one final time though in the 25/26 club season, he heads to Spain, Portugal and Italy as we delve into his Weekend Football Tips...

Last year, the 3-3-3 column returned a profit of 17 points, which means that if you’d backed every treble recommended over the course of the season for level £10 stakes, you’d be up by £170. That’s one of the better returns you’ll see in the tipping business and speaking of returns, Jamie Pacheco is returning again this year to do try to do it all over again, and maybe even improve on it.   

Welcome to the 3-3-3 betting column. Why is it called that? Glad you asked.  It’s not a formation to play when you’ve had a man sent off but rather: 

3- The number of different selections making up the acca. 

3- The number of different (non-English) European Leagues the selections are taken from every week. 

3- The minimum odds (3/1) or 4.0 if you prefer, that the acca will come to it every week. 

2025-26 season Current P and L: +17.5 pts  

2024-25 season’s P and L: + 16.9     

We were one goal short of a winner in the penultimate column of the season last week with Oviedo v Alaves ending 0-1 rather than 1-1, 2-1, 1-2 or something similar. But in truth, we can have few complaints: the goal Alaves scored was the only shot on target the whole match, so we would have been pretty fortunate if Oviedo had had just one themselves and that had also resulted in a goal.  

Besides, Porto left it late to beat Santa Clara 1-0 and we needed over 9.5 corners in Sassuolo v Lecce and got 10, so it would have been extremely fortunate if we had won. I try to be fair here in this column and it would have been a case of getting away with one, had we won.  

As explained last week, if we didn’t win last time out or here this week the column will end up with almost exactly the same points in profit this year (16.5) as last year (16.9). Now that’s an excellent return because I see plenty of yearly columns on betting sites that struggle to break even, while some even show considerable losses. So I’m pretty happy with that.  

But…at one stage we looked like we could really kick on, and this last month hasn’t produced any winners, which is a shame. But then again, we still have one more to go…  

• Valencia v Barcelona   
• Saturday 23 May 20.00 
• Back Under 3.5 Goals @ 8/11 

Barcelona gave us a few helping hands during that superb run of a couple of months ago, especially when it came to producing high-scoring matches at home.  

But these are very different circumstances. For starters, on the road their matches tended to have far fewer goals. It’s just 33% for over 3.5 goals games away, and none of the last six has gone that way. Last time out they lost 1-0 at Alaves, for example.  

And Valencia isn’t a side with games full of goals when at home. They’re at just 16.7% for over 3.5 goals matches on their own turf, and away it’s 26% so they certainly don’t like being involved in high-scoring games.   

This match did admittedly finish 5-0 Barca last year, but the three before that ended 1-2, 1-1 and 0-1, so those would have been winners.  

Barca wrapped up the title a few weeks ago and have been somewhat in cruise control since rather than going for the jugular.  

Lastly, Barca have been without the brilliant Lamine Yamal these last few weeks and it’s easy to argue they don’t score as many goals when he’s absent, so that’s in our favour, too. This may well end 0-2 or 1-2 or something, but I don’t think we’ll get four goals here.  

• Sporting v SC Uniao Torreense  
• Sunday 24 May 17:15  
• Back Over 1.5 Goals @ 2/9

First things first, yes, I understand that the rules of 3-3-3 state that selections are taken from three different leagues, but with so many leagues now over, I think we can open an exception and have one from a Cup final.  

It’s a minor miracle Torreense are in the Portuguese Cup final but now that they’re here, I’m sure they’ll enjoy it.    

But here’s the thing: they’re in the Portuguese Second Division and up against a side who were excellent for much of the campaign, including beating the likes of PSG at home in the Champions League. They just ran out of steam a bit at the end.  

So I think this may well end up 2-0 or 3-0 rather than 1-0. And there’s another factor here: Torrense have a promotion play-off match (to get promoted to the Super Liga) in midweek, so if it’s 1-0 after 60 minutes or so you can see them taking off a few key players in preparation for that one.   

You will have noticed the very short price we’re taking here: that’s because the other two selections are at quite big ones, so we can afford ourselves that luxury.  

• Napoli v Udinese  
• Sunday 24 May 17.00 
• Back Over 2.5 Goals @ 10/11 

I’m a bit surprised with the price on over 2.5 goals here when all the stats suggest that should be considerably shorter than the 10/11 on offer.  

Napoli have a 67% strike rate for over 2.5 goals at home and are up against a team who are 55% when on the road.  

Udinese scored 2,2,3,3 and 2 goals in their last five away, so based on that, you’d really expect them to get at least one here.  

Besides, this fixture has been filled with goals in the last few years.  Since 2016/17 Napoli have won it 4-2 in both 2018 and 2019, 5-1 in 2021 and 4-1 in 2023 with a 3-2 and a 2-1 in there as well. Even another 2-1 would do us just fine, please  

James’s Fun Fact  

Before the 2026 final, the last time the Taça de Portugal featured a team from outside the top division was in 2010, when second-tier G.D. Chaves reached the final against FC Porto