When the draw for the last 16 of the Champions League is made before Christmas, the warning always comes: wait till February. What can look a straightforward tie as the group stage ends may appear very different a couple of months down the line as form fluctuates and injuries, managerial changes and January signings take effect.
Recently that has tended to mean the superclubs asserting themselves, financial muscle powering through whatever blips may have occurred in the autumn. But as the Champions League knockout stage begins on Tuesday, very little has settled down and the competition looks more open than it has done for a decade or more.
In part that is down to individual issues at individual clubs, but there is also perhaps a sense that European football may be on the verge of one of its periodic eruptions. It is not just that there is only one more season of the present model of the Champions League. It is that the economic domination of the Premier League and Gianni Infantino’s determination to push ahead with his expanded Club World Cup is at last leading to serious discussion about the financial structure of the game, even if the latest 80-team Super League proposal suggests the wrong questions are being asked.
And just as some investors have begun to wonder whether it is possible to compete with what are effectively state projects, so have come the Premier League charges against Manchester City and the possibility that the game’s financial regulations do have teeth after all.
Nobody can be sure how or when that will play out but one possible outcome is an erosion of the Premier League’s dominance. At the same time, Spain, so recently so powerful, finds itself with only one side in the last 16 for the first time since the present format was adopted in 2003-04 (only twice before had it just two). The plates are shifting.
But behind the macronarratives lies the great and fundamental unpredictability of football: it remains resistant to being bullied down the expected path. The clubs leading what Uefa’s coefficient ranks as the best two leagues in Europe aren’t even in the Champions League, Arsenal having failed to qualify and Barcelona been knocked out.
The Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich were imperious in the group stage, winning six out of six, but they are facing their first genuine challenge domestically since 2018-19. Paris Saint-Germain may be top of Ligue 1 but remain prone to hilarious underachievement. The leaders of Serie A, Napoli, are playing brilliantly but they are edging into uncharted territory: they have never got beyond the last 16 of the Champions League or European Cup.
Adding to the sense of instability is a mischievous draw, the great God Football still able to tease those who would threaten its sanctity. PSG have the Golden Ball and the Golden Boot winners from the World Cup but cannot quite be bothered to see out the group stage properly: fine, your punishment for coming second is to play Bayern. Florentino Pérez in advocating for a European Super League complains Real Madrid have only ever met Liverpool on nine occasions: great, you can repeat last season’s final in the last 16.
For PSG, the question is always whether a side fatted on the easy meat of France can raise itself for an entirely different sort of game against the elite, but that is further complicated by injuries to the gilded duo of Lionel Messi, although he should return, and Kylian Mbappé, who has anyway been far from his best since the disappointment of losing in the World Cup final.
Bayern have begun to suffer a similar issue having claimed 10 Bundesliga titles in a row. It is indicative of just how complete their dominance has been that seven draws and a defeat in their first 19 games this season is regarded as a major blip. Cruising through to the last 16 is all very well, but the problem for the club and their coach, Julian Nagelsmann, has been raising their game in bigger European ties. And although they now have João Cancelo, Bayern too are without major players, with Manuel Neuer, Sadio Mané and Lucas Hernández all injured.
Real Madrid have suffered a wobble of late, winning just four of their last nine league games, but that may not matter – their performances in the Champions League have often defied logic. Last season, they were second best in long spells against PSG, Chelsea and Manchester City in the knockout phase and still found a way to win. Relying on Thibaut Courtois, Luka Modric or Karim Benzema to do something brilliant at a key moment is not a reliable way to win but it is perhaps still more reliable than a creaking Liverpool squad run by an increasingly cranky Jürgen Klopp.
City remain the bookmaker’s favourites but they are not the irresistible force of old. It may be that Pep Guardiola is vindicated in his decision to offload Cancelo, and that the hunger he has identified as lacking is restored, but with Kevin De Bruyne, Rúben Dias, Aymeric Laporte and Phil Foden all uncertain starters these days, at the very least it can be said that City are undergoing an unexpected transition.
That may or may not be linked to the obvious issue of Erling Haaland, a great goalscorer who demands quicker service than is natural to the Guardiola method of establishing counter-pressing structures. And who knows what impact the Premier League charges against them could have: will they be galvanised or will the players start to wonder whether their careers lie elsewhere?
Chelsea have a vast squad that is still settling while Tottenham sputter unconvincingly on and Internazionale and Milan are well off Napoli. Borussia Dortmund are in rich form domestically but neither they nor RB Leipzig would seem to have the squad depth to challenge. Benfica, who played well enough in the group stage to make them a plausible outsider, have lost Enzo Fernández to Chelsea. Which leaves Napoli as the one team with a deep enough squad who could confidently be said to be in form.
As the game contemplates radical financial change, it is worth remembering how unpredictable football remains and how central that unpredictability is to its appeal.
