Champions League will be won by Man City, Liverpool or Barce

For the past decade or so, every single Champions League campaign has begun with a kind of unspoken w88 agreement among everyone watching. We tune into the qualification playoffs as if the fourth-best team from Italy or England could actually make some noise come the knockout rounds. We watch the group stage draw to see who ended up in the Impossible Group and to complain about whatever other group Manchester City inevitably receive. We watch the group stages themselves to figure out whether this was the year Napoli, or Porto, or Arsenal, could finally put a real scare into one of the contenders.

But deep down, we all knew that either Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid were going to win and for the most part, and we were right. In the 10 editions of the tournament before 2018-19, that trio of teams won 80% of the European Cups. Bayern nabbed one, Barca won three and Madrid took home four. Perhaps more incredibly, one of those three teams were in every final and in the years where Bayern, Barca and Madrid didn't win, it required either a historic outlier or a literal volcanic eruption to prevent them from doing so. The title changed each year, but the natural order of things was for either Bayern, or Barcelona, or Real Madrid to be the best team in the world.



However, that all changed last year.

Madrid, the three-time defending champs, got uppercut into outer space by Ajax in the round of 16 while the eventual winners, Liverpool, took out Bayern in the same round and then Barca in the semis. Liverpool's victory marked the first time since 2012 that someone outside of the Bayern-Barca-Madrid triumvirate lifted the European Cup. And the final itself, with Tottenham finishing runner-up, marked the first time that none of the three continental superpowers appeared in the final since 2008, which, coincidentally, was also an all-English matchup between Manchester United and Chelsea w88 mobile .

Liverpool have now been to back-to-back finals, imposing their own kind of short-term dominance over the world's premier club competition. Except, as they've done so, they've only been the second best back home. Manchester City have established themselves as the best Premier League team of all time and the most consistent club in the world right now. If Liverpool are the best team in Europe, then City are the best team on the planet, which raises the question: How many teams realistically have a shot at the Champions League this season?

Europe's old Big Three is dead. The only one preventing Liverpool and City from turning it into a Big Two is the greatest soccer player we've ever seen. This season, City will win their first title, Lionel Messi will snag his fifth Champions League trophy or Liverpool will take home their second European Cup in a row.

Here's why anything else will be a surprise.


Liverpool have been to two straight Champions League finals, winning the second one, and look poised to return again this season. Burak Akbulut/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Just how good are Man City? On the one hand, it's hard to say. They've put together the two highest point totals in English soccer history in consecutive seasons, but they've also been dumped out of the Champions League in the quarterfinals in consecutive seasons, losing both times to English sides they dominated domestically that same year. On the other hand, it's not that hard: stunning loss to Norwich aside, they're freaking great w88 line .

According to data from the website Sports Odds History that goes back to 2010, the only teams who were bigger favorites to win the Champions League at this point in the season were Pep Guardiola's Barcelona teams, Tito Vilanova's Barcelona team that had 100 points in La Liga and Luis Enrique's Barcelona teams with Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar. (City's current odds are +320, which is an implied probability of about 24%.)

In other words, people with actual money on the line have as much faith in City as they did in a handful of the best teams of the sport's modern era.

If Guardiola has turned City into the new Barcelona, then Liverpool and Barcelona are the, uh, new Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. According to the same data from Sports Odds History, the collective odds of this year's top three (City, Liverpool and Barcelona) are roughly the same as they were for the peak Barca-Bayern-Madrid seasons. In fact, Liverpool's and Barcelona's odds of winning it all this season (both +550, or around 15%) are the same as they were for Madrid in 2013-14 and Barcelona the following year. Spoiler: Both of those teams won the Champions League.