Champions League’s league phase: Five things we’ve learned about UEFA’s new format ahead of chaotic Matchday 8

The finish line is in sight. Wednesday night will see the first league phase of the Champions League conclude in what promises to be thrilling, potentially overwhelming fashion as 18 games across Europe decide who will advance into the knockout stages of the continent’s most prestigious competition (you can catch all the coverage across Paramount+, CBS Sports Network and CBS Sports Golazo Network).

There is plenty left up for grabs. Only two of the top spots that come with a bye through the playoffs are locked in; teams as low as 17th could theoretically rise up to snare them. Meanwhile nine teams are vying for the six remaining places in the knockout stage. In that group such heavy hitters as Portuguese champions, Paris Saint-Germain and the footballing behemoth of Manchester City.

The new look of the competition would appear to have been a success but what have we learned about the league phase itself in year one. Let’s discuss.

1. Final day drama guaranteed

The unheralded duo of Feyenoord and Lille are perhaps playing off for a top eight berth. Real Madrid, doubtless believing they can go hurtling up the table in the final moments. Milan and Inter, both with a non-zero chance of knocking each other out of the top eight. Those are (deliberately) not the biggest storylines of a day when Stuttgart and Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City and Club Brugge are playing to advance. Almost every game on the final day has meaningful stakes to it, even the relatively unsexy Girona vs. Arsenal style matchups.

Best of all, everything is contingent. Events in the Bay Arena will go a long way to dictating whether victory at Villa Park means anything for either side. The ripple of fear that will spread across Europe if Madrid run a couple in early against Brest is almost palpable. Even the best games of the old group stage were hermetically sealed off from each other. 

Every coach with something to play for will at some stage this week say that they are focusing on what they can do, winning the game. Some might even be serious, concluding that with so much going on around them their best bet is to focus on what is in their control. Still, there are going to be plenty of coaches on the sidelines on Wednesday night who serve as little more than conduits between the live scores and the pitch.

Anyway, those who harbor serious intentions of being back in this competition in the years ahead had best get used to these sorts of conclusions to the league phase. It is pretty much baked in. Any league that concludes after eight games is going to be separated by fine margins, all the more so when it deliberately attempts to balance the fixture list as much as possible (more on that later). Take the EFL Championship at the seven game mark this season. A win might have taken Luton Town from 19th to 11th. League leaders West Bromwich Albion had six teams within three points of them. There is nothing remarkable about that, it is simply the norm.

Indeed there is something of a case to be made for more unpredictability in the years to come. You can probably price in something akin to the drama we will be getting around eighth place; in a small number of games a lot of teams of comparable quality are probably going to gravitate towards each other. This year has been notable for the cluster of clubs — most notably Girona, Bologna and Leipzig — around the three to five point range whose expected points would suggest they might have a fair few more. Every league phase will have some teams who aren’t where their shot profile and performance suggests they ought to be (Juventus I’m glowering at you), but this seems to have been a year that has been particularly tough for teams in the low 20s and early 30s.

Final matchdays like Wednesday’s are simply going to be the norm for years to come. Good luck to Nico Cantor and the rest of the Golazo Show crew. You are going to need it guys.

2. Scheduling really matters

One of the chief criticisms before the introduction of the Swiss system was that each team only playing just 22.8 percent of the field opened up all sorts of potential fixture imbalances. It is an issue that Leipzig will doubtless have now they have gone through year one. A Pot One side themselves, they began the league phase at home and away to Pot Two opponents — losing both in the 90th minute — before matches against their fellow top seeds either side of a visit to Celtic.

Given that those teams included Liverpool, Atletico Madrid and Inter, it was about as brutal a fixture list as UEFA could have meted out. Little wonder then that this competition was likely over for them when they were beaten at Celtic Park on matchday four. Another late goal, this time from Ross Barkley, meant Aston Villa formalized Leipzig’s elimination with two rounds of fixtures left to play. One of those is already won, and if Marco Rose’s side are inclined to go for it against Sturm Graz they will probably win that too.

How different might their league phase have been if Leipzig had played Graz and Sporting in their first two games, building momentum to take a real swing at their counterparts from Pots One and Two? The contrast might be a team like Brest, a side who would have been utterly entitled to enter the competition with trepidation. If so their fears must have been assuaged against Slovan Bratislava and Salzburg. This Champions League lark looks pretty easy actually.

Scheduling extends beyond just when you play your games but the games you play. Leipzig are probably a much better team than Celtic, but they got the Murderers Row of European club sides (and Juventus). They weren’t the only ones. The average club coefficient score of Paris Saint-Germain’s opponents was 74. The average of Celtic’s? 59.4.

This is going to be a problem keenly felt in the Champions League over the next few years, one wonders whether it might bring an outcry if a Real Madrid or Liverpool get a draw as tricky as Leipzig’s. Then again, it’s cup football. Groups of death were part and parcel of the old iteration. Some teams get to the final because they play the best. Some teams get their because the balls in Nyon break their way.

3. Fortunes change quickly

Doesn’t Sporting’s obliteration of Manchester City in early November only feel like yesterday? Perhaps it’s because not a lot has really changed for the champions of England since then, but a lot has changed in the standings. At that point — midway through matchday four — Sporting were second in the table, seemingly a probable top eight side even when their manager was going. Even after their wobble, City looked fine in table terms, seven points to their name. At the other end Bayern Munich and Atletico Madrid looked like very real candidates to be fighting for their lives at the end of this.

Instead it is City and Sporting whose fates remain on the line, the latter failing to pick up even one point since that stunning victory over the champions of England. Again scheduling allows for distortion. Sporting had beaten Lille and Sturm Graz. They still had Arsenal and Leipzig to come. They had a new manager to integrate. And then another.

When the margins are as tight as they are at the top of the European game, it does not change much for a Champions League campaign to swing from crisis to contention. Julian Alvarez and Antoine Griezmann established themselves as the starting strike duo; suddenly Atletico Madrid look like a team who might be able to win it all. Amorim goes and takes Sporting’s form with him. This league phase can change very quickly.

4. Goal difference is king

With one game left, nothing separates Arsenal and Inter but goal difference. That, however, could prove to be quite significant right across the table come Wednesday night, particularly in the battle for eighth. Right now, however, it is third and fourth that explains why. The goals the Gunners have rained in against Sporting, Monaco and Dinamo Zagreb have afforded them a plus 12 goal difference. That is so impactful that even though Mikel Arteta’s side are not officially through to the last 16, Opta places their qualification odds at 100 percent. The idea that they might drop a six goal advantage to multiple teams on 13 points is a rounding error.

Inter have seemed happy to sit on one goal leads when they have got them. The 4.4 non-penalty expected goals they have when leading is eclipsed by Arsenal on seven to say nothing of the likes of Atalanta and Liverpool. This probably won’t come back to bite them. However there is an unlikely scenario — Opta says a 2.3 percent chance — that they lose to Monaco and that other teams start picking up steam. There’d need to be a lot of them but what Arsenal have and Inter don’t is the cushion of a vastly superior goal difference.

In the battle for eighth it may well come down to exactly that. Bayer Leverkusen hold it for now by one. They may find themselves in a shootout with Aston Villa but if they win by two goals against Sparta Prague they have probably put enough daylight between themselves and Feyenoord, Lille and the like.

Goal difference is probably going to be the deciding factor in a plurality of top eight races from here on out. Kudos to anyone who saw this coming before a ball was kicked.

5. Mid-tier leagues, better than you thought

Even with Sporting’s struggles, this rather looks like the year of the lower middle classes of European football. PSG of all of them are the French club with jeopardy in their final game. Portugal and the Netherlands might send both of their representatives to the last 24. Celtic have been beaten and bruised so often in this competition that you wondered if they might be happier if UEFA could just wire them some group stage cash and let them get on with more pleasurable matters.

Invariably seeded third in the old group stage, it almost didn’t matter if Celtic would go on to deliver a famous night at Parkhead against one of the big names. They’d have another three games against top tier opposition. More often than not the best case scenario was an escape through the Europa League trapdoor. The same might have been true for their contemporaries: Dinamo Zagreb, Shakhtar Donetsk, Club Brugge. In a really good season, sure, they might make the round of 16. That was the exception, not the rule.

Of course the league phase cannot address the fundamentals of the European football market. There are still a dozen teams with wealth beyond the imagination of sides from Scotland and Croatia. They will probably all qualify for the knockout stages. At least this time there are another 12 places alongside them and wouldn’t you know it, now that the teams from Pots Three and Four are given a chance to play against more teams on their level, they are in the mix again. When teams seeded above you are half of your games rather than two-thirds, you have a real chance of doing something, all the more so if you can leverage your incredible atmosphere in one of the home games. That’s the difference between, say, downing Ajax at Celtic Park in 2013-14 and overcoming Leipzig 11 years later. This time it actually had a chance to mean something.