[ad_1]
With the Champions League returning this week as the round of 16 begins, we take a look at supercomputer Opta’s predictions for the competition in 2023-24.
At the beginning of the season, Opta supercomputer ran 10,000 simulations of the 2023-24 Champions League season and found that champions Manchester City won the competition 38.9% of the time. When the draw had just been made, they were big favorites to retain their title.
With the competition returning on Tuesday, City will travel to Denmark to take on FC Copenhagen and the European heavyweights. Real Madrid faces RB LeipzigWe decided it was a good time to see how the supercomputer ranks each team’s chances.
So in the latest batch of 10,000 simulations of the rest of the season, this is how often each team advanced to each stage of the competition, as well as how often they won it.
Of the remaining 16 teams, only four emerged victorious in more than a tenth of those simulations. City remains favorite to win the Champions League again after winning the treble last season, doing so 32.1% of the time. At the time of writing, they even have a more than 50% chance of reaching the finals.
After breaking the psychological barrier by winning Europe’s most important competition for the first time in its history last season, Pep Guardiola’s team is the team to beat in 2023-24.
Real Madrid are the second favorite to win the Champions League, with the 14-time winners expected to finish 15th in 15.4% of the supercomputer simulations. Madrid reaches the final in 28.1% of the simulations, while they are a big favorite to beat Leipzig and have only a 50% chance of reaching the quarterfinals.
Last season’s defeated finalists Inter Milan are considered the third most likely team to win the Champions League (11.6%), while reaching the final in just under a quarter of simulations of the supercomputer. The Serie A leaders are improving in the second half of the season, unbeaten through 90 minutes of their last 25 competitive matches.
Ahead of what could be a difficult round of 16 tie against Atlético de Madrid, they are on a streak of seven consecutive wins and are big favorites to beat Diego Simeone’s team. History tells us that Atlético should never be completely ruled out, but with only a 6.1% chance of reaching the final and a 2.4% chance of winning it all, it would be a bigger surprise than ever if Atlético made it as far as possible in the competition.
Harry Kane’s chances of ending his wait for silverware suffered a major blow on Saturday when Bayern Munich was overtaken by Bundesliga leader Bayer Leverkusen.. Although they will not have given up on winning a national trophy this season, the Champions League will now have taken on greater importance. They are the fourth favorite to win the trophy according to the Opta supercomputer (10.1%), while they are the second team most likely to overcome the round of 16 tie, beating Lazio, an outsider in the tournament according to our simulations. 79.3% of the time.
At 8.4%, Arsenal still have a notable chance of winning the Champions League for the first time, while reaching the final in almost a fifth of simulations. After going through a difficult time at Christmas when his form suffered, Mikel Arteta’s side recovered in time for the Champions League last 16. They beat West Ham on Sundayand now has a streak of four consecutive victories as its round of 16 tie against Porto approaches.
Paris Saint-Germain is the sixth team most likely to win the Champions League, with 6.4% of simulations. The runaway Ligue 1 leaders are sure to win their domestic league again and appear to have become a better collective unit since losing stars Neymar and Lionel Messi. The Champions League is the trophy they want more than any other, and it has always been out of reach in recent years, but with Kylian Mbappé in tow, anything can happen. They face Real Sociedad this week and have a 64.5% chance of beating them.
Barcelona (3.4%) and Borussia Dortmund (3.0%) are next on our list of predictions, but neither team is having a great season domestically and they will have to improve dramatically if they want to beat the best and win Europe’s elite competition.
Seven teams are considered to have a 1.5% or less chance of winning the competition. In Porto (two titles) and PSV Eindhoven (one title), those seven teams have some European pedigree between them, but RB Leipzig, Real Sociedad, Napoli, Lazio and Copenhagen would all be their first winners. Copenhagen’s chances of overtaking City are pretty slim, and their chances of winning it all are so low that they round to one decimal place at 0%.
Who do you think will win the Champions League? Let us know on our social accounts at x, instagram, Tik Tok and Facebook. You can also subscribe to our football bulletin ‘Stat, Viz, Quiz’ to receive exclusive weekly content.
[ad_2]
Source link