Sporting vs Marseille Prediction: Back the French strikers to have a good night out in Lisbon

Sporting host Marseille in the third game of the Champions League 2025-26 season, with a kick-off time of 20:00 on Wednesday night, live on TNT Sports.   

Jamie Pacheco talks you through the team news, form and his sole wager for this match, which is an 11/8 chance as he takes us through his top Sporting vs Marseille Prediction...

*You can check out all the Football Odds and markets on offer with us over at betfred.com

Match Preview:

Sporting  

We're going to give Sporting 7.5/10 in terms of their start to the season.  

They lost the Portuguese Super Cup to Benfica but have started the season well on the domestic front with six wins from eight matches. And the two games in which they lost points were to teams who have been Top 4 for the last few seasons: a 2-1 home defeat to Porto, and a 1-1 draw with Braga a couple of weeks ago.  

In this competition, a good 4-1 win over Kairat Almaty was followed by a 2-1 defeat at Napoli, a match where they didn't do too much wrong and went down to a brace from Rasmus Hojlund.  

Colombian Luis Suarez, with 11 goals in 12 appearances this season is looking an excellent signing and making up for the loss of Viktor Gyokeres.   

Marseille 

Marseille are top of Ligue 1. And that's not after one match or two, but after eight. They're on 18 points - six wins two losses - and one point clear of PSG in second place. 

Their recent form has been excellent. They have won each of their last five, including a superb 1-0 home win against PSG and a vital 4-0 victory over Ajax in this competition. Including that match and the two either side of it, they've now scored 13 goals in their last three.  

Before that win over Ajax, they went down 2-1 to Real Madrid away - no disgrace there - with Kylian Mbappe scoring both for Real in that one.  

But a decent result here and they'll feel that with a strong squad and a good manager in Roberto de Zerbi, they'll have very chance of filling their coffers, courtesy of a decent run in the UCL.    

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang may be 36 but he's still got it while Mason Greenwood, a youngster in comparison to him at just 24, scored four (!) at the weekend, as he continues to impress at OM.    

Match Odds (Double Chance)

Sporting are 6/5, which is implied probability of 54.5%, Marseille are 9/4 (30.8%) and the draw is 13/5, or 27.8%.  

My first instinct is that the Lions look a bit short at those odds considering Marseille's strong start to the season and particularly good form at the moment. Marseille or Draw on the Double Chance market is available at 7/10, and those two bites of the cherry will surely be of interest to many.  

This is particularly the case when you consider that the only time they played in Lisbon in an official match before this one, the French won it 2-0 in October 2022; they also won 4-1 in Marseille two weeks earlier.  

But the stats show Marseille haven't been good travellers in this competition, losing 10 of their last 11 on the road, and four of their last five played in Portugal. 

That poor away form is the only reason we're not opposing Sporting here at the prices.  

*You can check out Betfred's full market on this match by visiting our Sporting vs Marseille Odds page on betfred.com

Away Team Goals  

This really isn't an easy match to call in terms of the final result, while other markets like goalscorers, cards and corners have some options you look at and think 'that could well happen' only for the odds to be shorter than what you would have liked.  

But what I can't forget about is Marseille's record at scoring goals of late. 21 in eight Ligue 1 games, 13 in their last three in all competitions, five in their two so far in this competition: pick which of those stats you like the most.   

So here's what I'm going to do: take Sporting goals out of the equation, so will ignore any markets dependent on the match result. And I'll also somewhat ignore Marseille's poor away record in the Champions League, and even worse record when it comes to playing in Portugal.  

It's true that Sporting don't often concede two in a game but it's also true they don't often play teams with Marseille's quality in attack. So, Marseille to score over 1.5 away goals at 11/8 it is.

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Jamie Pacheco Football P/L 2025 (Excludes 3-3-3 column):  

• Points Staked: 10.5  
• Points Returned: 11.515 
• Current P/L: +1.015