Champions League burning questions: Why shouldn’t Real Madrid be favorites? How good will English teams be?

The Champions League returns on Tuesday night for a three day spectacular, year two of the new league phase kicking off with a bang as heavy hitters such as Bayern Munich and Chelsea face off. After Paris Saint-Germain went from the brink of elimination to European champions in a matter of five months, this season’s competition seems replete with possibilities. The holders begin as many people’s favorites, but the emerging force that is Real Madrid look as well placed as ever to compete for the biggest prizes.

Then there is the expanded English contingent to consider, a sextet in which every side can have realistic aspirations to, at the very least, go deep into the competition. Beyond that, this season’s Champions League delivers four league phase debutants. One of them, Kairat Almaty, might just be the most intriguing team in the competition. We’ll discuss them and much more below in this week’s burning questions.

Save big on your Paramount+ subscription! For a limited time, Paramount+ annual plans start at $30 for your first year… That’s like $2.50 a month for 12 months! Go to Paramount+.com/FallOffer to get started. (Ends Sept. 18. Plans auto-renew. New & Ex Subs. T&C’s apply.)

1. Should Real Madrid be favorites to win it all?

They might have been the competition’s holders, they might have had three of the top four in Ballon d’Or voting and they might have added Kylian Mbappe to an outstanding young core, but at no stage last season did Real Madrid look like a team capable of lifting Champions League crown No.16. Injuries beset their backline and at the top of the field nothing Carlo Ancelotti tried seemed to really get Vinicius Junior and Mbappe playing harmoniously. Games seemed to happen to Madrid; in those that mattered it was probably only at home to a punch-drunk Manchester City that they exerted some degree of control.

Not this season. A Xabi Alonso side couldn’t countenance a game where they were not the prime actors. The changes he has rapidly made to Real Madrid were best summarised by Real Sociedad boss Sergio Francisco, the man who had to try to overcome the less than 100% Los Merengues on Saturday afternoon. “Xabi has changed things,” he said. “You can see that Real Madrid want the ball more, they’re more combinative, more aggressive in pressing after losing possession. They can sink opponents in their own half, maybe not with as many scoring chances, but with the feeling of being dominated. I feel like it’s a Real Madrid with a bit more balance.”

The data backed up what Francisco was saying, at least until it was warped somewhat by a battling win for 10-man Madrid at the Anoeta. In their first three La Liga matches their average attacking sequence started nearly six meters nearer to the opposition goal and there was a 10% upswing in the number of sequences that started in the attacking third. Real Madrid are winning the ball higher, but when they get it they are prepared to take their time. Even after their battling win in San Sebastian, the sort where you have to hoof it at the death, they have the best pass completion in the league. Right now there appears to be no other team that is better at getting the ball to the final third and keeping it there. If you were listing teams from the last five years that that is reminiscent of, Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen would be right up there. The personnel have changed, so has the system, but this is still recognisable from the good Bundesliga side whose manager made them invincible.

This team, meanwhile, has a settled Mbappe. Alonso has shown a willingness to chop and change much of his attack in the early games, but Mbappe stays. No wonder. He has four goals and an assist through his first four games and is averaging a ludicrous six shots per 90 minutes. Madrid’s 4-2-3-1 looks to be fitting him in better alongside Vinicius Junior too, the Brazilian holding a bit more width while Mbappe drops into the left half space.

The attack is clicking and the defense has the numbers to weather an injury like Antonio Rudiger’s. Dean Huijsen, in particular, looks impressive in the games where he isn’t getting red carded. Everything has knitted together quite nicely for a team that is still waiting on the return of Jude Bellingham and Eduardo Camavinga.

Is there anything stopping them from winning the Champions League then? Nothing that is obviously within Alonso’s control. There is the small matter of PSG, Liverpool, Arsenal and Barcelona, all of whom have had a lot longer to bed in their approach than Madrid have. At the very least, however, at the early stage of the season the perennial winners look like they could do it yet again. That should be very ominous for the rest of the continent.

2. How many English teams make the top eight?

You can’t move for Premier League representatives in the league phase this season. The success of English clubs across European competitions in general, and Tottenham winning the Europa League means there will be six of them in total and perhaps every one of them, and at the very least four, will go into their games believing they have a very real prospect of finishing in the top eight and earning a bye to the round of 16.

To start with the obvious, something has gone disastrously wrong if Arsenal and Liverpool don’t make it. The former had the second easiest set of fixtures in the league phase, according to CBS Sports’ strength of schedule ranking, based on Opta’s team ranking at the time of the draw. Liverpool’s investment in top tier attacking talent means they are gambling a little bit with their depth, but unless they suffer a brutal injury crisis they should coast into the top eight.

Predicting every Champions League league phase game: Real Madrid to finish first, Barcelona, PSG close behind

James Benge

Manchester City and Chelsea are more intriguing. Pep Guardiola’s side might have brushed Manchester United aside, but their fixture list holds few assignments that are quite that straightforward. As they transition to a more up down, Erling Haaland focused style of play it is easy to see the odd wobble here and there, it only takes two losses like the ones they suffered against Sporting and Juventus to effectively banjax a top eight push. Chelsea, meanwhile, served notice at the Club World Cup that they intend to rank among the game’s elite. They will have to reaffirm that status with tricky games against Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Napoli and Atalanta.

Where Newcastle are concerned, the early signs this season are that Eddie Howe has taken a more cautious approach to his side’s style of play that might suit Europe, but runs the risk of faltering at home to Benfica or Athletic Bilbao. More than any other side, the Magpies have been given the rough stuff in their league games. You wouldn’t say the same of Tottenham and one of the most intriguing storylines across the sport in the coming months will be how Thomas Frank adapts his style in games where all the possession and territory is Spurs’. So far that appears to be a work in progress, but set pieces are delivering quick wins in the meantime. 

So, how many English teams in the top eight? Having taken on the thankless task of predicting every single game of the league phase, my best bet is three: Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City. Chelsea are the intriguing fringe case, they may well need to take four points in Italy and/or beat at least one of Bayern Munich and Barcelona. That is not beyond them and if Enzo Maresca’s men are successful in that task, we could see an awful lot of Premier League come the business end of this competition.

3. Will this be another down year for Serie A?

Instinctively such a preponderance of Prem feels about right given its status in European football and yet in the last three seasons there have been just two English semifinalists, Manchester City the year they won it and Arsenal back in May. 

That is fewer than Serie A, in no small part down to Inter, who in 2023 and 2025 came as close as any team to ending Italy’s now 15-year wait for a European club champion, the second longest in its history. In both seasons a final berth was a top 10 percentile outcomes for the Nerazzuri, who rode a favorable draw of local opposition to Istanbul one year and then scraped through high grade knockout games against Bayern Munich and Barcelona the other. That is what can happen for a team who hover around the sixth to ninth best team in Europe range. What can also happen to them is a penalty shootout defeat early on in the knockouts like when Atletico Madrid sent them packing in 2024.

So far there hasn’t been a great deal in the two defeats they’ve suffered from their first three games that would suggest Inter have dropped from the peak Simone Inzaghi got them to, though until Cristian Chivu proves himself to be an elite head coach the absence of one will be a dint against them. The same might be true for Juventus but it is fair to say that the Old Lady have made some interesting recruitment decisions in the likes of Lois Openda and Jonathan David. Taking nearly half their shots from outside the box has brought brilliant results so far this season; it is a brave man who gambles on it lasting.

It feels a little too early to get a good read on Atalanta post Gian Piero Gasperini, their advanced stats look great but they have only played Pisa, Parma and Lecce, from whom they would expect to take more than five points. Most intriguing of all might be Napoli, who have rolled out an everybody eats offense early this season, their league leading 6.11 xG spread across a string of players including Scott McTominay, Rasmus Hojlund and Kevin De Bruyne. 

They have looked good in a small sample size so far this season, but in the bigger selection of matches they have played since Khvicha Kvaratskhelia left for Paris Saint-Germain they look like a pretty ordinary European outfit, just barely the best team in Italy but hardly one ready to sweep the continent. Unless De Bruyne can offer a consistent run of injury-free peak performances, the talent just does not seem to be there. The same might well be the case across the rest of Italy. That long wait may soon match the two decades Serie A had to watch on up to 1985.

4. Are Kairat that bad?

It may well be that the biggest shock of the Champions League season happened before many were really paying attention. According to Club Elo ratings, the odds of Celtic not winning either of their games against Kazakh champions Kairat Almaty was roughly +16500. Those same ratings give Kairat an Elo score of 1302 and rate the best team, Liverpool, at 2010. If that doesn’t sound too bad it is worth noting that Bodo/Glimt, ranked the 33rd best team in the competition, are almost exactly equidistant between Liverpool and Kairat. Even Pafos and Qarabag are a long way clear of the Champions League’s most easterly ever team.

And that isn’t a fluke of one dataset either. Opta’s club power rankings rate Kairat the 437th best team in the world, a smidge above Lincoln City, currently 14th in League One. Most statistical models believe this is a team that would do well to survive a season in the Championship. Surely that makes them nothing more than fodder for Europe’s best and brightest?

Then again, this team has just come through four opponents of increasing quality: Olimpia Ljubljana and Finland’s KuPS are hardly big beasts of Europe but a team that can take Slovan Bratislava and Celtic to penalties is perhaps not roadkill in waiting. After all, home and away they held the latter to 1.78 xG and eight shots over three and a half hours of football. They have a helpful advantage that any team drawn away to them is going to have to travel 4,000 miles and cross three or four time zones to play a football match in the midst of a hectic European season.

This is football, too. It is not a high scoring sport, if Daezen Maeda has an off day in a knockout match then the entire course of a season can change. On one day Kairat might get the breaks, perhaps even on the one where Real Madrid come to town. Stranger things have happened in football. Not many of course.

How to watch

The opening round of league phase fixtures will take place across three days – Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday – and all of it will be available to watch on Paramount+, with select additional coverage on CBS Sports Network and CBS Sports Golazo Network. Pre-match coverage starts at 12 p.m. ET on CBS Sports Network each day before select matches air at 12:45 p.m. ET and 3 p.m. ET, with post-match coverage transitioning to Paramount+ and CBS Sports Golazo Network. The Golazo Show will be free on CBS Sports Golazo Network for Matchday 1, while coverage concludes on CBS Sports Golazo Network with new editions of The Champions Club, which will be simulcast on YouTube, and Scoreline.