LAST UPDATE | 13 Feb 2023
16. Club Brugge
This ranking might seem harsh given that Club Brugge came through a tough group that also featured Atletico Madrid, Bayer Leverkusen and Porto, but really, they have succeeded simply by getting this far and anything else will be considered a bonus. Their form domestically has not been especially encouraging — they sit fourth at the time of writing, 20 points off leaders Genk — and their best-known player to Irish fans is probably former Liverpool goalkeeper Simon Mignolet, who at 34 is still a regular in the side.
15. Eintracht Frankfurt
Another side who have not been especially impressive domestically, as they are currently sixth in the Bundesliga, though they only trail leaders Bayern by eight points. They were somewhat fortunate to find themselves in a weak enough group alongside Tottenham, Sporting, and Marseille and got over the line in second place thanks to a final-day victory over the Portuguese outfit. Of their notable players, Mario Gotze is the name who will ring a bell to most football fans. He famously scored the winning goal in the 2014 World Cup final and perhaps has not had quite the career expected of him since then, but the 30-year-old unquestionably remains a good footballer, featuring regularly in the Bundesliga this season and appearing twice off the bench for Germany at the Qatar World Cup during their ill-fated campaign.
14. RB Leipzig
Placed just above Frankfurt as is the case in the Bundesliga where only a point separates them. Their stars include former Chelsea outcast Timo Werner, as well as other players with plenty of international experience including Spain’s Dani Olmo, Sweden’s Emil Forsberg, Denmark’s Yussuf Poulsen, and Portugal’s André Silva, while they also possess a player who was widely considered one of the standout defenders of the 2022 World Cup in Croatia’s Joško Gvardiol, who narrowly lost out in the Young Player of the Tournament award to Argentine star Enzo Fernandez. So Leipzig have plenty of talent and experience within their ranks but whether it is enough to go much further appears doubtful. The draw has not been kind, as they face Man City in the round of 16 and so you suspect their interest will end there.
13. Porto
Porto’s Champions League record is pretty remarkable given how their finances pale in comparison to the top European sides and the fact that Portuguese football is not where the really top players tend to go (unless they are only starting out their careers). They have won the European Cup/Champions League twice, in 1987, and in 2004 under Jose Mourinho. While they have seldom looked capable of repeating those feats in more recent years, there has still been a degree of consistency. In the 19 competitions that have taken place since they last triumphed, they have made the knockout stages 12 times, but have never gone further than the quarter-finals within that period.
12. AC Milan
Having set such high standards in winning Serie A last year, this season has not been a vintage one for AC Milan who sit fifth and it seems highly unlikely that they will catch runaway leaders Napoli. Even qualifying for next season’s Champions League is far from guaranteed, so they can hardly take it easy domestically. In the round of 16, they face another team who are struggling for consistency in Antonio Conte’s Tottenham and they will probably fancy their chances against a Spurs side who have been unconvincing for much of this season. Yet Italian football is no longer the force it once was and when you consider that their forward line for a recent 1-0 Milan derby defeat was Divock Origi and a 36-year-old Olivier Giroud, while a 41-year-old Zlatan Ibrahimovic is on the verge of returning from a long injury layoff, then you begin to realise why they are considered by most people as rank outsiders to prevail. And incredibly, despite having won the competition more times than anyone aside from Real Madrid, Tuesday will be their first knockout match since 2014.
11. Borussia Dortmund
If you are a highly gifted young player, there are seemingly few better places in Europe to be than Borussia Dortmund. Erling Haaland is their most obvious recent graduate, but he is far from the only example of a prodigiously gifted footballer that has come through their ranks. Of their current squad, Jude Bellingham (19), Giovanni Reyna (20), Youssoufa Moukoko (18), and Jamie Bynoe-Gittens (18) are all considered among the most talented and sought-after young players in Europe. They also have some highly experienced pros like Marco Reus, Emre Can, and Mats Hummels to guide them along. On the other hand, Dortmund have won the competition only once in 1997 and reached the final under Jurgen Klopp in 2013, but ostensibly don’t quite have the depth across the squad to match either of those achievements. Still, they are not a team that the top sides will relish coming up against and Edin Terzić’s men are doing well enough in the Bundesliga, as they currently sit just three points off table toppers Bayern.
10. Benfica
They may have just lost one of their best players in Enzo Fernández to Chelsea for a British transfer record, but Benfica, the current league leaders in Portugal, will be a major test for upcoming opponents Club Brugge and any other side who may face them this year. They were hugely impressive in the group stages, winning four, drawing two, and coming top of a group that also featured PSG, Juventus, and Maccabi Haifa. Like Porto, they must be assessed in the context of Portuguese football’s confines, and are consequently dark horses at best. For now, though, they have managed to keep hold of 21-year-old forward Goncalo Ramos, who was one of the sensations of the 2022 World Cup owing primarily to his remarkable round-of-16 hat-trick against Switzerland after being picked ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo. There are plenty of other squad members who will be familiar to fans who are not necessarily hardcore Primeira Liga followers including ex-Man City defender and club captain Nicolás Otamendi, experienced Portugal international João Mário, as well as Julian Draxler and Gonçalo Guedes, who are on loan from PSG and Wolves respectively.
9. Tottenham
Spurs can look excellent on their day as they demonstrated in the recent 1-0 win over Manchester City, but more often than not this season, they have been unconvincing at best, with last weekend’s 4-1 defeat by Leicester City meaning they followed their most impressive performance of the season with arguably their worst. Perhaps they could be forgiven for having one eye on Tuesday’s Champions League first leg with Milan at the San Siro, but they won’t go into the game with a great deal of confidence on the back of Saturday’s awful display. It was disastrous in another sense too, with key player Rodrigo Bentancur ruled out with a cruciate injury for the rest of the season on top of Yves Bissouma requiring surgery for a stress fracture to his left ankle, leaving the North Londoners looking considerably light in the central midfield department. Nonetheless, Antonio Conte’s side possess the capability to spring a surprise and still have a number of the same players who helped them go all the way to the final in 2019.
8. Inter Milan
Currently second in Serie A but the fact that they are 16 points behind leaders Napoli emphasises that the season hasn’t really gone according to plan for Inter. And when you look at the team, it contains a number of decent players albeit ones who previously failed to set the Premier League alight — Romelu Lukaku, Matteo Darmian, Edin Džeko, and Henrikh Mkhitaryan are among their big names. Lautaro Martínez was also one of the few Argentina players not to emerge from the World Cup with their reputation enhanced, though plenty of fans will remember Nicolò Barella starring for Italy in their Euros triumph and Dutch international Denzel Dumfries is one of Europe’s most highly rated full-backs and has recently been linked with a move to Man United. Overall, there are plenty of teams left with better squads than Inter and they did lose twice in the group stages. However, they face a winnable round-of-16 tie against Porto and if they can come through that, have the potential to spring a few surprises thereafter.
7. Chelsea
Probably the hardest team left in the competition to predict. The prospect of Chelsea winning outright against the odds, just as they did under Thomas Tuchel in 2021 and with Roberto Di Matteo as the manager in 2012, is not entirely inconceivable. They certainly have the talent in their squad to go far, but whether their numerous new signings can gel quickly enough remains to be seen. You could just as easily see them crashing out in the round of 16 against Dortmund, particularly given the poor season they have endured in England. They are currently ninth in the table and barring a considerable late surge, look set to miss out on Champions League football next year. Yet the fact that they have little to play for domestically could actually work in their favour and give them scope to rest players while most of their rivals are battling on a couple of fronts amid the end-of-season run-in. However, a Chelsea triumph, as unlikely as it may seem, would hardly be fondly embraced by neutrals as a great underdog story. According to the Financial Times, the €329 million they spent in the January transfer window was more than all the top-tier clubs in Italy, Spain, France and Germany combined
6. Liverpool
Like Chelsea, Liverpool have had an awful season domestically and as with the Blues, they can arguably afford to put all their eggs in the Champions League basket. Were you to look at the Reds’ European results alone though, you would not guess how inexplicably bad they have been in the Premier League. They breezed through the group stages, winning all but one of their games, albeit still finishing behind Napoli, who were similarly proficient. Mo Salah may be having a disappointing season by his high standards, but he is still the Champions League joint top scorer with Kylian Mbappe, having registered seven goals — the same number that he has managed in England’s top flight. The lack of confidence stemming from their disastrous form may well hold them back and it would be no surprise to see them exit at the hands of their old nemesis Real Madrid in the round of 16. That said, they are still capable of big performances sporadically, such as the surprise 1-0 victory against Man City earlier this season, and could exceed expectations again in what is essentially a cup competition. And their players know what it takes to go far in the Champions League, having appeared in three of the last five finals.
5. Napoli
An already astonishing campaign could get even better for Napoli. They are arguably the form team not only in Serie A but in Europe. They have won 19 and lost just one of their 22 league matches and qualified from the Champions League group stages with similar ease. Such consistency takes some doing, particularly amid an unusually chaotic, World Cup-interrupted season. There are arguably two big question marks though. One is the Serie A’s weakness in comparison to the Premier League, and whether they can step up to the very highest level. Another is their relative lack of experience when it comes to really big European games. A 1989 Diego Maradona-era-inspired Uefa Cup win is their only notable triumph beyond Italian football. But on the flip side, they are somewhat of an unknown quantity. The likes of Victor Osimhen, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Piotr Zielinski, Giovanni Di Lorenzo, and Kim Min-Jae have been key to their recent success story, but are not necessarily household names yet to football fans who don’t watch Serie A regularly.
4. Real Madrid
They couldn’t do it again, could they? Carlo Ancelotti’s side were prematurely dismissed as a spent force by some commentators last season before deservedly triumphing, beating Man City and Liverpool among others along the way. This year, they are still somewhat reliant on veteran campaigners like Toni Kroos (33), current Ballon D’Or holder Karim Benzema (35), and one of the star performers at this year’s World Cup Luka Modric (37). However, they are protected by highly accomplished defenders like David Alaba and Antonio Rudiger, while there is plenty of energy provided in other areas of the pitch by younger players including Vinícius Júnior, Federico Valverde, Aurélien Tchouaméni and Eduardo Camavinga. It hasn’t been a great season domestically so far — they trail Xavi’s resurgent Barcelona team by 11 points but with a game in hand. Nevertheless, it would still be foolish to bet against the Spanish outfit sealing what would be a remarkable 15th triumph and sixth since 2014 alone.
3. PSG
For all their riches and the many league titles they have accumulated as a result, the Champions League is the one trophy that continues to elude PSG. With just one runners-up medal in the competition since the Qatar Sports Investments era, they have undoubtedly underperformed relative to their financial might and it seems remarkable to think that the 1996 Cup Winners’ Cup remains the only major European trophy they have won. Nonetheless, they do have Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe, the two players who lit up the 2022 World Cup arguably more than any others, and the Argentine in particular will be on a high owing to that incredible month in Qatar and will also be eager to further enhance his legacy amid the final act of his career. However, there are significant doubts as to whether they can succeed. They may be five points clear in Ligue 1, but at the very highest level, PSG have a history of wilting when the real pressure comes and flattering to deceive no matter how many superstars they sign. They also have been punished for finishing second in the group stages, as they were handed an extremely difficult round-of-16 tie against another one of the favourites for the competition — Bayern Munich.
2. Bayern Munich
Few if any of the sides in Europe boast a more impressive or balanced squad than the reigning Bundesliga champions. Everywhere you look there is world-class talent whether it’s goalkeeper (Manuel Neuer, although he is currently injured and embroiled in a row with the club), defence (Matthijs de Ligt), midfield (Joshua Kimmich) and attack (Sadio Mane, who is nearing a return from the injury that ruled him out of the World Cup). They face the considerable obstacle of PGS in the last 16, but the winner of that tie will be strongly fancied to go all the way. Bayern also boast one of the most respected managers in European football (Julian Nagelsmann), have an excellent track record at this level with six wins and five runners-up medals (only Real Madrid and Milan are superior in this regard) and while their season has been far from perfect, they are still top of the table and have enjoyed a better season domestically than many of the others Champions League teams considered among the favourites to prevail.
1. Man City
Pep Guardiola’s side may be having a less-than-vintage season, however, ask any other team in the competition who they fear most and Man City will likely be the consensus response. They looked in ominous form for much of the group stages, scoring 14 times and conceding just twice, with Erling Haaland finding the net on five occasions thus far. You still get the feeling Guardiola has not found the perfect balance to complement the Norwegian’s obvious strengths, yet no matter who he does or doesn’t play, City will be formidable opposition for anyone. That the Catalan coach can afford to leave hugely talented players like Jack Grealish, Julian Alvarez, or Phil Foden on the bench or off the matchday squad entirely gives some indication of their sheer strength in depth. There is, of course, a cloud hanging over City in relation to their alleged financial improprieties as well as Guardiola’s reputation for tinkering and arguably overcomplicating matters in big games, leading to City consistently suffering agonising exits in the latter stages of this competition. So they are by no means strong favourites — it feels like a relatively open year — but it would be no surprise to see them finally deliver and in the process, add yet another complicated layer to what is an extraordinary and highly controversial unfolding story.
