UEFA Champions League 2024/2025

[Jnr]

I didn't realise Bremer went off with a potential cruciate injury last night. That's season changing stuff for Juve.

Arrived at JMedical on crutches. Seems he's out for sure. Bremer is what's holding their defense together.

I never want to see this even on Rube's best player and even laugh because I believe in karma. This could happen to our best players too.

 

[ElDuccio]

The format would be more interesting if only the first 8. would advance. With the playoff even Milan has still a good chance. And generelly doing a whole league system to replace the group stage is ridicolous, they should remove the 1/8 finals.

 

[Adriano@10]

The format would be more interesting if only the first 8. would advance. With the playoff even Milan has still a good chance. And generelly doing a whole league system to replace the group stage is ridicolous, they should remove the 1/8 finals.

If the new format was about competitiveness and not increasing the amount of games and revenues you d be right.
Said it from the get go to reach the knockout stages is gonna be easier for the big teams they have more games and winning two and two draws might already be enough seeing as there are 13 teams who only got one point or less from two games and quite a few of them seems way out of depth...
Think it s probably gonna be intresting around that 8th spot till the last day and maybe around spot 24 but i don expect any big team to be involved in that battle for 24.....
I mean look at bbilan they still have bruges redstar zagreb and bratislava to play they re most likely gonna easily finish in that top 24 despite sitting at 0 points two game days in.

Also side note i m not sure if seeding maters for the knockout stages which might bring some excitement to the last couple of matchdays.

 

[.h.]

Depends what you mean as big team?
Psg Barca real city arsenal inter Juve Bayern is already 8 and leaves out athletico Milan, only had 2 English clubs, Etc.

It's inevitable a big team will miss out top 8, though I guess your point is no big team will miss out the knockout stages?

Iirc 9-16 will play against 17-24

 

[CafeCordoba]

System guarantees that even if you, as a big club, manage to play poorly for 8 games, you have a chance to fix it in the playoff matchup and still get to round of 16.

But given big teams fight for everything in their domestic leagues, avoiding extra pressure cooker matches in the middle of a very congested schedule in the winter is a big advantage.

We should do everything in our power to avoid those extra matches. Start is good, avoiding the defeat against pot 1 away match was good. Arsenal home and Leverkusen away are the big ones, avoid defeat there and we should be fine. Win the rest of the home games and we're even allowed to draw one away game to make it 4W4D => 16p and very good chances for top8 spot.

 

[SiamoNoi]

The Opta supercomputer believes 16 points from a possible 24 - so five wins and a draw from eight matches, or other combinations - would almost certainly be enough to finish in the top eight, which guarantees you a last 16 spot in the New Year.

The data also believes 15 points - so five wins from eight games, or other combinations - could be enough to sneak into eighth place, with that points tally being enough in 73 per cent of Opta's 50,000 simulations of the league phase.

Fourteen points, so four wins and two draws, is unlikely to be enough for a top eight finish - so the race to five wins is likely to be the target for the biggest sides.

To finish in the top 24, which guarantees you a play-off spot at least, Opta believes 10 points - so three wins and a draw, or other combinations - will almost certainly guarantee you a place in that round.

Nine points - so three wins from eight games, or other combinations - could be enough to finish 24th, with that points tally being enough in 69 per cent of the simulations.

But just eight points - so two wins and two draws, or other combinations - runs the risk of elimination, with that points tally being sufficient in just 16 per cent of the simulations.

So teams will be targeting at least three wins from eight to give them the best possible chance of reaching the Champions League knockout rounds.

We need 4 wins basically. Young Boys,Leipzig,Sparta and one of Arsenal and Bayer to basically secure top 8 before the last round vs Monaco.

I mean look at bbilan they still have bruges redstar zagreb and bratislava to play

They are not playing Zagreb. Zagreb is in lower division and last time played in CL 20+ years ago.

Also side note i m not sure if seeding maters for the knockout stages which might bring some excitement to the last couple of matchdays.

9-16 are in one pot and 17-24 in another pot. 9-16 teams play second game at home.
Top 8 teams are hosting second leg of round of 16 at home.

Correct, but if you're trading off league Vs CL, the Cl target is 16 points, the league target is to win every point possible.

What is wrong with people wanting to trade one for the other?

 

[thatdude]

Also on other injury in the first half for Juve, Nico Gonzalez. Funnily tho, Conceicao scored the winner, totally dismanteling the defence

He’ll be better than Nico Gonzalez. Every time I see him I’m impressed.

 

[.h.]

We need 4 wins basically. Young Boys,Leipzig,Sparta and one of Arsenal and Bayer to basically secure top 8 before the last round vs Monaco.



They are not playing Zagreb. Zagreb is in lower division and last time played in CL 20+ years ago.

9-16 are in one pot and 17-24 in another pot. 9-16 teams play second game at home.
Top 8 teams are hosting second leg of round of 16 at home.

What is wrong with people wanting to trade one for the other?

Because we shouldn't be sacrificing league progress for CL. No club does, intentionally. League is the only place we should be making assumptions we can win a trophy, and it's table stakes for a "big" club. Esp this early in the season. If you're 15 points clear in March then you can focus on the knock outs with a bit less risk.

 

[Il Drago]

He’ll be better than Nico Gonzalez. Every time I see him I’m impressed.

Crazy Porto out of all teams let him leave on loan

 

[wera]

There will be no 15 points lead in March by any Serie A club. This is going to be close until the last matchday IMO

What we do need to do is secure the top8 spot before playing Monaco, preferably. Hopefully Monaco will have nothing to play for by then. It's not the type of team I see us winning if we need a win.

In any case, we have a hard CL schedule. If we manage to be in the top8 after this series of games, I think it's possible for Inter to win it in the end. They have it in them.

 

[.h.]

There will be no 15 points lead in March by any Serie A club. This is going to be close until the last matchday IMO

which is exactly my point - we cant use the CL as an excuse for not focusing on the league. Winning the league this year is an absolute must, especially given the form of the competition.

Put it like this, if a draw vs City is the difference between 7th and 8th, but we lose the title because of the loss vs Milan, that will be a massive, massive mistake and we'd all regret 'saving energy' for City on a league table that made very little difference.

In any case, we have a hard CL schedule. If we manage to be in the top8 after this series of games, I think it's possible for Inter to win it in the end. They have it in them.

I think this statement is ridiculous, unless you're talking about the mathematical possibility rather than reality. We couldnt even get out of R16 last year, this competition is tougher (e.g. Liverpool are better, City are still really good albeit losing Rodri is hard, inexplicably Barca look not bad), and Inter are playing like dogshit right now for the most part. We'd have to step it up two gears, IMHO, to even get to the QFs right now.

 

[wera]

Well yeah but hindsight is 20/20. It's not like if we lost against City that our players would play any better against Milan. I'm sure the players know what are the expectations, but that could also add extra pressure if everybody keeps saying THEY SHOULD WIN SERIE A, instead of just putting the head down and working hard to get into a winning groove and see where we go from there.

 

[brehme1989]

CL matchday looks so uninspiring.

18 games, the only ones that shout late stage matchup are the Spanish-German ones Real Madrid vs Dortmund and Barcelona vs Bayern Munchen.

RB Leipzig vs Liverpool looks appealing on a sporting level
Then you have the more football culture matchups between Benfica and Feyenoord, plus Atalanta and Celtic.
And the AngloItalian underdog battle between Aston Villa and Bologna.

But for the "neutrals", there's only two games, one on each.

 

[CafeCordoba]

Well yeah but hindsight is 20/20. It's not like if we lost against City that our players would play any better against Milan. I'm sure the players know what are the expectations, but that could also add extra pressure if everybody keeps saying THEY SHOULD WIN SERIE A, instead of just putting the head down and working hard to get into a winning groove and see where we go from there.

This. Football is not played half-assed at this level. I cannot understand people are really suggesting we should not play "properly" and let the opponent win, to save some of our energy to the next match. I don't think it works like that.

The schedule was tough in this one (City, then Milan), but I'm not sure if City match affected the players in a way that if they played City match with energy-saving mode, we would have won Milan. Like how the coach could even suggest such thing to the players? We already used few reserves in that match (Taremi, Zielinski, Bisseck), but is the suggestion we should have used Asllani, Augusto, Arnautovic, De Vrij also?

Anyway, saying "winning the league this year is an absolute must" is quite a statement, given the added games we have and specially versus the competition we have now in the league. All our rivals are better and in my books our main rival for the title (Napoli) has just Serie A to focus on. That's around 9-10 less games by January (then CL knockout games on top, let's say 2-4). So probably at least 9-11 more games (Super Coppa included), in 5.5 months.

 

[wera]

I'm interested if Inzaghi will try something crazy in these next few games, like Lautaro as a LCM or Pavard as a RCM, because I'm afraid Barella is not 100% ready to play so many games in this tempo.

Also no Hakan against Juventus will SUUUUUUUCK. Hopefully he is back by then.

 

[Jnr]

Meelan getting outplayed vs Brugge. Not a great start. 3rd loss on 3rd MD would be hilarious tbh

 

[Linege]

pulisic scored from corner, nice gk

 

[brakbrak]

Fucking Mignolet fucked up his positioning there

 

[Kramerica Industries]

This. Football is not played half-assed at this level. I cannot understand people are really suggesting we should not play "properly" and let the opponent win, to save some of our energy to the next match. I don't think it works like that.

The schedule was tough in this one (City, then Milan), but I'm not sure if City match affected the players in a way that if they played City match with energy-saving mode, we would have won Milan. Like how the coach could even suggest such thing to the players? We already used few reserves in that match (Taremi, Zielinski, Bisseck), but is the suggestion we should have used Asllani, Augusto, Arnautovic, De Vrij also?

Anyway, saying "winning the league this year is an absolute must" is quite a statement, given the added games we have and specially versus the competition we have now in the league. All our rivals are better and in my books our main rival for the title (Napoli) has just Serie A to focus on. That's around 9-10 less games by January (then CL knockout games on top, let's say 2-4). So probably at least 9-11 more games (Super Coppa included), in 5.5 months.

I wrote about this before the City game (had an aged-like-milk Milan joke as well which I won't refer back to, lol), but the Man City game was, mathematically speaking, the least important game we'd play in the league phase, quite possibly least important game we'll play all season. It was in Manchester, so unlikely to win, and it was the first game of the league phase, so plenty of time to make up ground for an early setback. Anything we got from that game would be a bonus, nothing much was expected.

But that's the FM way of looking at it. It doesn't work like that in real life. In real life, that was a CL Final rematch from just 15 months prior. Many players in our lineup that night are still here. Nothing we did that night would make up for the loss in 2023, but there would nonetheless be an air of unfinished business, being happy to get another crack at them just to see how we level up. That playing them as well as we did that night, even in defeat, wasn't just a fluke. (This is where I'll also remind that it was spoken about how our performance that night, and the confidence taken from seeing that we could play up to that level and push a treble-winning Man City side to the limit, helped fuel our excellent 2023-'24 season.) Man City is a team we quite possibly will need to get past later on this season if we harbor any Champions League ambitions - forget Oaktree; the players and coaches are going to have this kind of goal whether it's "realistic" or not - so what better way to get an early read and some video on them than playing them directly.

The fact is, that Man City game was always going to be taken more seriously than its placement on the calendar dictated because that's how human nature works. There was no scenario to speak of where "oh, we've got the derby on Sunday, we need to prioritize that, rotate if needed in England, etc." was ever going to happen. Imagine facing arguably the best team in Europe and then telling Lautaro "we're sitting you" and imagine how that goes over. It doesn't, that's how you upset players and dressing rooms in general. We're not some tiny club, we're a fucking defending league champion, nobody is going to back down from a challenge.

The calendar did us no favors. Milan had a difficult CL opponent as well, but they had an extra day of rest and they played at home. Whatever. (It also doesn't help us this week either; we play on Wednesday in Switzerland - admittedly not a long flight from Milan - while Juve play at home today.) That's on us to figure out a way to deal with it. Strong-mined teams brush aside those problems, weak-minded teams use them as an excuse after they lose.

 

[Il Drago]

Dortmund leading at Bernabeu

0-2 now. Lol