A favorite will rarely lift the Champions League. Over the past couple of years, the two winners were Chelsea in 2021 and Real Madrid in 2022. Neither of these teams was favorites, despite their obvious strengths. When looking at the Champions League, it is easy to see why it is such an enthralling and captivating football competition. It brings together the best teams on the European continent and pits them against one another. It is considered the measuring stick for the stature of a football club.
The Champions League predictions for this year seem to follow a similar trend to the past few years. Manchester City has been one of the favorites for the trophy since Pep Guardiola began to tighten his grip over Manchester City’s spending and style of play. Despite initially suffering some teething issues when he first took over at the Etihad, the legendary Spanish manager has now won multiple leagues and domestic trophies.
They’re already looking as if they have one hand on the Premier League this season. This is due to the terrifying form of Norwegian wonderkid Erling Haaland. Haaland scored three hat tricks in his first eight games for Manchester City, and he could be on course for the Ballon D’Or with 14 goals in his first eight games after destroying Manchester United. If he can steer City to their first Champions League, it would be hard to see another player in world football more deserving of the prestigious honor.
The season is still early, and plenty of twists and turns are expected. During the semifinals of last year’s competition, Manchester City could have scored double figures against Real Madrid. However, they crumbled in stoppage time of the game at the Bernabeu and conceded two goals in the last three minutes to spectacularly crash out of the competition. Many analysts believe one of the key reasons for this is their lack of an out-and-out number nine, which they have now in the huge talismanic Norwegian. We expect City will go in as favorites for this year’s competition, but if they can’t manage to win it this year, you might begin to think about what they need to do to get their hands on the trophy.
Liverpool is always in the conversation regarding the Champions League. Despite a mediocre start to their league season, they seem to muster up the ability to grind out results on Europe’s biggest stage. Jurgen Klopp’s men lifted the trophy in 2019, and it wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility to see them lift it again. If any other English team apart from Manchester City lifts the trophy this season, we expect that it will be them over anyone else.
Real Madrid, the defending champions, are rank outsiders to retain their title in this year’s campaign. This isn’t because they lack the quality; they’re an extremely solid set of players. However, the semifinal against Manchester City saw them scrape through despite being comprehensively outplayed. In the final, they stole a goal from a Liverpool team that seemed to do everything but find the back of the net during the final in Paris last season.
With Carlo Ancelotti at the helm, anything is possible for Real Madrid, they have won the competition more times than anybody else, and Ancelotti is the first manager in the game’s history to win the trophy on four separate occasions. The team still contains some of the greatest talents of this generation, including players such as Luka Modric and Karim Benzema.
However, both are in the twilight of their careers, and City has depth, strength, youth, quality and experience. They would be unlikely to repeat the same mistakes if they met again in this year’s competition. However, Madrid also has depth and strength with young Brazilian superstar Vinicius Jr on the wing, who scored the decisive goal in last year’s final. If they were to lift the trophy again, it wouldn’t cause too much of a shock, although you won’t find many people placing a bet on them.
Other teams in the conversation include Paris St Germain. They have one of the strongest attacking lineups in the world, with Kylian Mbappe, Neymar and Lionel Messi running rampant in the French league. However, our pick for this year has to be City, with Haaland looking like he’s going to become the best striker of his generation. He seems destined to do extremely special things with City this year, including lifting the biggest club trophy in European football.
