For many of the 2024-25 Champions League’s first 126 video games, no person knew something. , and , however what did all of it imply? The competitors’s , made conclusions murky.
Till now.
On Wednesday, the penultimate day of the league section, Manchester Metropolis blew a 2-0 lead at Paris Saint-Germain, and plunged into the underside 12 of the Champions League desk.
PSG’s comeback, to win 4-2, propelled the Parisians up into twenty second place — narrowly inside the highest 24, the knockout-round locations — and left Metropolis in twenty fifth, two factors under twenty fourth.
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Remarkably, after a number of collapses and solely two victories in seven tries, Metropolis stays alive. A win at house in opposition to Membership Brugge on the ultimate matchday, subsequent Wednesday, would nearly actually be sufficient to safe a spot within the play-in spherical.
However a win, lastly, is a should. The brand new format — which grants 24 of 36 groups a spot within the knockout spherical — has been forgiving to Metropolis, the four-time reigning champion of England and the preseason Champions League favourite. Metropolis, nonetheless, has been so unfathomably dangerous that its room for error is now nil.
And eventually, elsewhere within the Champions League, there may be some readability.
Of the 24 locations within the knockouts, 18 have been claimed.
The final six will likely be received, or coughed up, subsequent week.
With one chaotic spherical of video games to go, this is how the Champions League stacks up:
Clinched bye to Spherical of 16 (2): Liverpool (21), Barcelona (18)
Clinched knockout rounds, in rivalry for bye (16): Arsenal (16), Inter Milan (16), Atlético Madrid (15), AC Milan (15), Atalanta (14), Bayer Leverkusen (13), Aston Villa (13), Monaco (13), Lille (13), Brest (13), Feyenoord (13), Borussia Dortmund (12), Bayern Munich (12), Actual Madrid (12), Juventus (12), Celtic (12)
In rivalry for knockout rounds: PSV (11), Membership Brugge (11), Benfica (10), PSG (10), Sporting Clube de Portugal (10), Stuttgart (10), Manchester Metropolis (8), Dinamo Zagreb (8), Shakhtar Donetsk (7)
Eradicated: Bologna (5), Sparta Prague (4), RB Leipzig (3), Girona (3), Crvena Zvezda (Pink Star Belgrade) (3), Sturm Graz (3), RB Salzburg (3), BSC Younger Boys (1), Slovan Bratislava (0)
Inside that bucket of byes, in principle, there are incentives connected to greater finishes. Because the seemingly prime two, for instance, Liverpool and Barcelona would not face one another till the ultimate, as a result of the knockout rounds will likely be bracketed and seeded. Additionally they would not face the third- and fourth-place groups till the semis. They will get an opponent seeded Fifteenth-18th within the Spherical of 16, and one seeded no higher than seventh within the quarterfinals.
All of these, on paper, are benefits. However the league section has been so messy that the precise worth of prime seeds is unclear. Three of the 4 pre-competition favorites, Actual Madrid, Man Metropolis and Bayern Munich, now sit in Fifteenth, sixteenth and twenty fifth place with one match to go.
And tiny margins nonetheless separate many of the pack. Eighth-place Bayer Leverkusen is on 13 factors; so is Thirteenth-place Brest; and 18th-place Celtic is on 12. Objective differential, and maybe different tiebreakers, will decide who finishes precisely the place.
Which implies, in fact, that the ultimate day — subsequent Wednesday, when all 36 groups play concurrently — will likely be bonkers. The drama will likely be unprecedented. The 2-hour rollercoaster will likely be wild.
However the situations, and the permutations, are nonetheless too complicated to stipulate. The one clear one is that Metropolis should win.