Novo Hamburgo vs Santa Cruz – Preview, Prediction and Betting Tips 23/01/2024

On Tuesday night, Novo Hamburgo and Santa Cruz meet in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre, in a match valid for the second round of the Rio Grande do Sul state championship.

This game could be important for both teams, who will theoretically compete at the bottom of the leaderboard.

Novo Hamburgo

On one side we have Novo Hamburgo, which last season almost fell to the second division and spent much of the qualifying phase in the relegation zone.

For this year, 2024, “Nóia” hopes to advance to the next phase, as the Campeonato Gaúcho ended up changing its format.

Now, instead of the top 4 teams advancing to the semi-finals, there will also be a quarter-final stage, meaning 8 of the 12 teams in the competition will also advance to the next stage.

But it is a modest team, with very little investment and started the championship showing these difficulties.

They bet on the continuity of coach Edinho Rosa, and in the first match they had the same offensive problems of last season.

We can consider it a good result, drawing with Brasil de Pelotas away from home, without goals, but they will now need to assert control on the field.

Against Brasil de Pelotas, they played a very strong game defensively, however, very poor in attack.

The tendency is for us to see games in which Novo Hamburgo participates, where the goal average will be very low, due to an inability to propose, focused on defensive play and sometimes, not even field control will make a difference.

Santa Cruz

On the other side we have Santa Cruz, a team coming from the second division of the Campeonato Gaúcho.

It is a team that also does not have a large investment, certainly staying in the first division and trying to get a place in Series D would be one of its main objectives for 2024.

The team was champion of the second division last season, but does not have great investment potential and, in fact, its biggest signing was goalkeeper Marcelo Pitol, 41 years old, known to the people of Rio Grande do Sul.

It is a team that will not demonstrate great offensive capacity throughout this year and the tendency is to play very intense games, very strong in defense, but not very productive in attack.

The team is currently in last place with no points gained, as they lost at home to Juventude, in the first round, by a score of 1-0.

It presented exactly these problems of an intense but poor offensive construction game.

Conclusion:

Also taking into account the characteristics of Novo Hamburgo, I believe that Santa Cruz can give the home team a lot of trouble, but this game tends to have few goals.