A 36-team table looks bloated. Much of it can feel meaningless. And yet in an attempt to decipher a new format, one conclusion feels clear. A top-eight finish is preferable: to avoid the fixture congestion of an extra round, to dodge a potentially awkward tie with one of the best of the rest or a superpower who underperforms in the league format of the Champions League.
If a revamped tournament was supposed to feature more clashes between the elite at an early stage, Wednesday has a tie with teams who possess a legitimate claim to be among the best eight in Europe. They were, after all, both quarter-finalists last year. To add to their lustre, they are two of the 12 clubs who have reached a Champions League final in the last decade. One has a Champions League-winning manager, the other a double Champions League finalist. This might be a cruise towards the latter stages.
And yet it is currently 23rd vs 28th, where only the top 24 survive. After three games, Paris Saint-Germain find themselves right down in the lower ranks of the play-off teams, who would then get the second leg away from home. Atletico Madrid, meanwhile, are in an even worse position which means they will miss that round for very different reasons. They are in with the minnows, outside the top 24. After three rounds, their goal difference was better only than those of Red Star Belgrade, RB Salzburg, Young Boys Bern and Slovan Bratislava.
If one theory was the reinvented Champions League had been stripped of jeopardy, perhaps PSG and Atletico have injected some with their underachievement. The French champions already look unlikely to get the top-eight finish their status and budget ought to necessitate. The Spanish side risk becoming the biggest casualties of the unwieldy group stage.
In PSG’s case, it could be seen as a struggle to adapt to life after Kylian Mbappe, to adjust to the post-Galactico era, even if Luis Enrique’s new-look side contrive to be both more rooted in organic principles and yet still hugely expensive.
There are tales of individual games: PSG were profligate against PSV Eindhoven, amassing 26 shots yet still only drawing 1-1 in what had looked one of their most winnable games. Their only victory to date was gifted to them, Girona’s Paulo Gazzaniga both dropping and diverting a 90th-minute cross into his own net. For PSG, a start with three of their first four games at home ought to have represented the easier part.
“If [on Wednesday] one of the teams loses but wins the next four matches, they will qualify,” said Enrique, arguing he does not have to win this week. But logically, his fixture list gets more demanding: after Atletico, PSG face Bayern Munich, Salzburg, Manchester City and Stuttgart. The danger is their last four outings produces just three points. “It is not a decisive match,” said Enrique, but if nine are required for a play-off place, the meeting with Atleti could appear a must-win.
It also highlights one element of the altered, expanded competition. Each side faces two clubs apiece from pots one, two, three and four, but some draws are harder than others. PSG’s pot-four opponents are Girona and Stuttgart. By Opta’s formula, they had the toughest fixture list of all; go by average coefficient of their opponents and it was the second toughest, behind only Feyenoord. By those criteria, Atletico’s was ranked the seventh hardest of 36.
They have contrived to make it harder. A 4-0 reverse in Benfica was followed by a 3-1 meltdown at home to Lille, one of the most surprising results in the competition so far. As with PSG, their position could have been worse: they, too, got their only win from a 90th-minute goal in the first matchday, courtesy of Jose Maria Gimenez against RB Leipzig. Unlike PSG, they can see salvation in the fixture list, with games against Sparta Prague, Slovan Bratislava and Salzburg to come.
Yet their fallibility feels significant. “Atletico Madrid is one of the best teams in the world,” said Enrique. They were. “They will be a very tough team to beat,” added Enrique. They were. Atletico used to be arguably the hardest team to face, the side that punched above their weight to reach the 2014 and 2016 finals. The subsequent eight-and-a-half years may offer evidence of decline under Diego Simeone, even if it isn’t linear: Atleti eliminated the champions Liverpool in 2020 and knocked Internazionale out on penalties last season.
Yet while the four-team group stage was accused of predictability, Atletico and PSG added more than may be may be acknowledged. For Simeone’s side, the nadir came in 2022-23, when they managed to prop up a pool including Bayer Leverkusen, Club Brugge and Porto. They rebounded to win their group last season, but across different formats, they have only triumphed in 11 of their last 30 matches at this stage.
PSG, meanwhile, did not top their group in any of their three previous campaigns. Finishing second behind Benfica in 2022-23 plunged them into a last-16 tie with Bayern Munich which they promptly lost. In 2021-22, they came second to Manchester City and then lost to Real Madrid. If they had a habit of landing in some of the more difficult groups, now they have one of the more gruelling schedules in a 36-team group.
Perhaps the play-off round provides insurance for sides such as PSG and Atletico. But if a reinvented Champions League offers a procession to the last 16 for some of their peers, these two may instead be on a voyage into the unknown. They could be pioneers, among the first teams to experience the consequences of coming between ninth and 24th.
