Football Bet of the Day: Get on a Dzeko double at 11/2

Fiorentina are in desperate need of an upturn in form as they get set to host Sigma Olomouc in their first game of the league phase of the Uefa Conference League at the Artemio Franchi on Thursday (21:00 local, 20:00 BST, live on Discovery+).

To call the Viola’s start to 2025/26 ‘abysmal’ would be to denigrate the adjective, but my Football Bet of the Day for Thursday foresees a rare bit of good news for Stefano Pioli’s side.

Fiorentina vs Sigma Olomouc Odds

Whatever the Viola have turned in so far, there’s no doubting which side should be making all the running here. Fiorentina are 2/7 with Betfred to win the match, with Sigma a distant 10/1 chance.

The draw is 9/2, with the goalscorer markets filled upon with names more familiar to Tuscany than to the Czech Republic.

It was in the Conference League that Fiorentina recorded their only win of the season to date, although even that two-legged triumph over Polissya Zhytomyr couldn’t exactly be filed under ‘convincing’.

Having beaten the Ukrainians 3-0 in Slovakia, the Viola found themselves 2-0 behind very early on at the Franchi and it was only a three-goal burst in the final 11 minutes which secured passage from the qualifying rounds into the league phase.

The third of those goals was scored by a familiar name in Edin Dzeko. The former Manchester City, Roma and Inter front man may be 39 years of age now, but he showed that night that he still has a use as a front man.

Since that night in August, the Bosnia and Herzegovina international has started just one game at club level and was hauled off at half-time in a 3-1 home defeat to champions Napoli.

And while Fiorentina have gone without a win in their opening five league matches, Dzeko has been forced to watch on from the bench for much of the campaign.

Even on Sunday he was kept in reserve until the 87th minute of the 0-0 draw in Pisa as his teammates did their best to let the home side take all three points in another poor performance.

Dzeko has plenty to offer even at this late stage in his career. He scored three goals in two games during the last international break, netting twice in a 6-0 win against San Marino and then grabbing an equaliser in Bosnia’s eventual 2-1 defeat to Austria.

Sigma are a club who have conceded just six goals in 10 league matches so far this season, but their Europa League qualifying woes against Malmo said far more about their readiness to take something from this fixture.

They were easily second best to the Swedes, losing 3-0 at the Elena Stadion before going down 2-0 at home in a game which saw them fire in 13 shots but work the goalkeeper only twice.

Over the course of the two legs they ended up shipping five goals from just 11 shots on target, and despite Malmo only recording an xG of 2.90 to Sigma’s 2.43 over the 180 minutes the Czech side too readily gave them the opportunities to capitalise.

And if Dzeko is given anything like the same sort of space at the Franchi on Thursday, I expect him to make the most of it.

He’s a 1/1 to score at any time in the 90 minutes, and 10/3 to back the first goal.

But in the search for value I fancy the look of the 11/2 available for him to score two or more at an implied 15.4% probability.

As he showed in the last international break, he still has the quality to make poor teams pay.

Offers

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