The European leagues are back in full swing after an agonizingly long international break, and the fall is beginning to seriously set in. This means only one thing for soccer fans: the Champions League. And since I've just finished watching the third game of the group stages throughout my Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon classes, it's a great time to renew my annual feature and make my predictions for the greatest tournament on earth (which will definitely, definitely, come true).
OK, so they probably won't come true, but it's still fun to try. And to start out, it's pretty easy to identify which teams will qualify for the knockout stages in most of the groups. While no team has actually wrapped up qualification, the following teams have a very high likelihood of making it: Bayern Munich, Inter Milan, Benfica, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Bayer Leverkusen, Arsenal, Marseille, AC Milan and Barcelona.
For those of you playing along at home, 11 teams are pretty much already in the knockout stages, meaning there are five spots left for the rest of the contenders in the groups that are close - namely, groups A, B, D, and G. With just three group games left to go, the spots are still up for grabs but, in the end, I see Napoli prevailing from group A (beating out Manchester City and its oil money), CSKA Moscow from group B, Lyon from group D and Zenit St. Petersburg and FC Porto from group G.
So now we have the field and, at this point, the predictions start getting a lot harder. All the teams are so close in talent and, more obviously, the draw has not been set yet. Because of the ambiguity, I once again decided to break the teams up into groups for the interests of weeding out the pretenders and finding out which clubs actually have a chance of winning.
We'll start at the bottom, because like the New York Times Monday crossword, it's by far the easiest to do. By this, I mean the minnows - the clubs that are just happy to be in the knockout stage and will probably be out in the first round. While it's always nice to think of a Cinderella story, you have to go all the way back to the 2003?04 season to find a real upset winner (FC Porto), and historically, the Champions League really has been dominated by the big clubs. With that in mind, we can say goodbye to Zenit, FC Porto, CSKA Moscow, Bayer Leverkusen, Marseille and Benfica.
Now it gets harder, because all of the remaining 10 teams have loads of talent and smart managers. But with a closer look, it's easy to see that a few of the clubs aren't up to the level required to win such a grueling tournament. Arsenal, Chelsea, Napoli, Lyon, AC Milan and Inter Milan are all clubs either on the rise or that have fallen from their peak levels of a few years ago; not exactly ideal states for teams trying to win a European Cup.
This leaves just Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Barcelona. Obviously, at this point, all the teams are outstanding and distinctions between them are almost impossible. In the end, though, if I were forced to make a prediction right now, I'd have to go with Barcelona. I know it's the easy pick to make, but given how dominant they were in last year's tournament and how much deeper they are now, it's almost impossible to pick against them. No club has won the Champions League back?to?back since 1990, but this year, I think Barcelona has the best chance in recent memory to do just that, and capture its fourth European Cup since 2006 in the process.
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