Champions League Predictions

(Courtesy of [puamelia] - Flickr)

At the half-way point I thought it might be useful to have a look at who is looking good for qualification and also, with some futility, make some predictions on who is going to go furthest.

I am really enjoying the fact that we’re seeing more and more drama in the Champions League, with big teams having their way less and less often. It’s been a while since the Champions League went the way we thought it would. Last year we saw the teams who finished top in their domestic leagues in Portugal, Germany and England; Porto, Borussia Dortmund and Manchester City respectively, not even make it out of the group stage, and Manchester United fell at the first hurdle too. It seems ironic then that the original idea of the group stage, introduced in the 1991-92 season, was to ensure that the big teams went further. The owners of the big clubs, particularly Ramon Mendoza and Silvio Berlusconi, at that time owners of Real Madrid and AC Milan respectively, were fed up of seeing their teams knocked out in the early rounds of the cup if drawn against another big team. In fact Real and AC were drawn against each other in the second round of the European Cup in the 89-90 season, a tie which the Italian side won 2-1 on aggregate. The idea of creating the groups was also, I suppose, that in a longer format the quality of the ‘better’, and richer, teams would show through, rather than in a knockout format where a minnow can get lucky against a giant. Something that is perpetually referred to in England as “the magic of the cup.” Of course losing money was the main issue, not the fact that they couldn’t win the cup. So they created the groups with 6 matches for each team for lots more tickets to be sold and lots more TV revenue. Happily, however, this seems to be just as unsuccessful as the previous system. With some new Champions in England and Germany in recent years, Man City and Borussia Dortmund, they haven’t built up their European Coefficient enough to be high seeds. (The European Coefficient is confusing and frustrating enough to warrant its own post, but it isn’t interesting enough so it won’t get one). Thus we have groups like group D this year (the ‘group of death’), and group E which sees Shakhtar giving Juventus and Chelsea a bit of a shock.  All this is great for the spectator. Even the groups in which we thought we knew what was going to happen there have been some surprises. At the half way mark only Manchester United, Barcelona and Porto of the number 1 seeds are top of their groups. And to say that they’ve had an easy time of it would be an absolute lie.

Who will qualify?

At the moment the teams going to qualify are:

Porto and Paris Saint-Germain

Schalke and Arsenal

Malaga and Milan

Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid

Shakhtar and Chelsea

Valencia and one of BATE or Bayern (Trust me, that’s correct, took me 10 minutes)

Barcelona and Celtic

Manchester United and Cluj

To be honest, as play-safe as this is of me, I would change very little of this for my end of group predictions. Maybe a few will swap around (Schalke and Arsenal, Borussia and Real for example). As good as BATE were in their first two games I reckon Bayern will qualify 1st in that group, probably just ahead of Valencia in 2^nd, although they will have to step it up a gear to do this. The only change I will make is that Braga will probably qualify instead of Cluj. I even fancy Celtic to make it, although never underestimate the Scots’ ability to completely self-destruct and ruin it.

Who will go far?

A much more interesting question. No one has been performing outstandingly so far except maybe Porto, who have looked very strong. However, since winning the trophy under the Special One back in 2004 Porto have only made it past the first knockout round once, losing to Manchester United in the quarter finals in the 2008/9 season. They are a strict to form team, they beat teams that they are better than but tend to come unstuck against the ‘bigger’ teams. My predictions depend, of course, on the draw, especially for the quarters and semis where it is anyone v anyone. With so many top quality teams not topping their groups at this stage we can expect to see some tasty first knockout round ties as well. I’m hoping that at least a couple from Chelsea, Real, Bayern, Arsenal and AC will not leapfrog their supposedly ‘lesser’ group-mates to finish first, which could give us Manchester United v Real Madrid and Barcelona v Bayern Munich as two first round ties, which would be amazing, for the neutrals at least. It would also stick a big middle finger up at a plan that Silvio Berlusconi came up with, and that’s always nice. I have to say, providing we don’t get some outrageous first round ties, you still have to fancy four of the big dogs; Real Madrid, Manchester United, Barcelona, Chelsea and Bayern to be semi-finalists.

Dark Horses

Shakhtar Donetsk, definitely. It’s easy to say that now they’ve topped the group but they’ve still got a long way to go. It’s still possible they won’t qualify for February’s games. Looking down their squad list is like looking at the shopping list for some of the top clubs in Europe. You see Willian, currently being courted by Tottenham, but at the moment you could forgive him for not wanting to go, even if he is good friends with AVB. Then his compatriots; Fernandinho, captain Alan, Alex Texeira and Douglas Costa are all superbly talented. All you need to do is watch some of their games/highlights to see that the way they play could well make them the Brazilian midfield on their own. In front of them Eduardo, former Arsenal man, Marko Devic, scorer of ‘the goal that wasn’t’ against England this summer, and Luiz Adriano are all deadly finishers. This team could genuinely go very far in this tournament. I think that if one of the 5 ‘big dogs’ mentioned don’t make it to the semis it will be down to the boys from Donetsk.

Arsenal are possibly a bit too big-time to be considered dark horses, but since they are not favourites to make it to the semis I’m going to include them. Having managed  only two first knockout rounds and a quarter final from the last three years Arsene Wenger will be hoping that following a reinvention of his transfer policy and a decent-ish start to the Premier League season that they could do one better this season and make it to the final four. Arsenal seem to  be able to win ugly these days as well as win pretty so perhaps they could grind out a result against one of the big boys, they would especially fancy their chances of doing one of the other English teams over, who haven’t been performing imperiously this season either. Arsene will have to sort out his team’s form in the group stage first.

Winner?

Is it just a case of choosing between Barca and Real like last season? Well neither of them made it to the final last season so that shows how useful predictions are. Having said that I think it’s going to be Real Madrid. European teams seem to have figured Barcelona out a bit better than 75% of the Spanish league, who still think that playing nice football is the way to go. Sure they way to do it is not pretty but it worked for Chelsea, and almost for Celtic! So I’m going to say a final between Real Madrid and whoever else makes it out from wreckage of the quarters and the semis.  Mourinho became the first manager to win the league in Spain, England and Italy last season and I think he will be the first manager to win the Champions League with three different clubs this season. He’s got a great squad, but he really knows how to win trophies and this will be the difference.