Champions League predictions for 2024-25: Opta forecast

The Champions League is back, although Europe's elite club competition will have a very different look in the 2024-25 season.

Not only did the tournament increase from 32 to 36 teams, but the format also changed significantly.

The previous four-team, eight-team groups have been replaced by a league stage, with all clubs playing eight games instead of the previous six and being ranked in a full table.

Finishing in the top eight guarantees immediate qualification for the last 16, while teams between ninth and 24th will compete in the new Champions League play-offs for the right to join the leading teams in the prestigious knockout stage.

There is no longer a safety net in the Europa League either - the bottom 12 of the 36 teams and the eight teams that lose in the play-offs will all be immediately eliminated from this season's continental football.

Real Madrid head into the revamped tournament as the defending champions. The 15-time champions have won in two of the past three seasons and now have Kylian Mbappé in the fold.

The teams Real Madrid beat in those two finals - Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund - are also in the mix, as are 2022-23 European champions Manchester City, their Premier League title rivals Arsenal and continental heavyweights Barcelona, Bayern Munich,countryInternationalMilanThe same is true for Paris Saint-Germain.

Four teams are participating in Europe's biggest tournament for the first time: Bologna, Brest, Girona and Slovan Bratislava; Aston Villa, meanwhile, will be participating in the Champions League era for the first time, having previously crowned European champions when the tournament was known as the European Cup.

But who will come out on top in this season's competition? The Opta supercomputer continues to garner plenty of attention during the domestic league season, and it has also made some high-profile calls ahead of Euro 2024.

Now, it's not shy about putting its (robotic) neck on the line again.

The supercomputer has simulated the 2024-25 season 10,000 times and confirmed its pre-match percentages. So, without further ado, let's take a look at its UEFA Champions League predictions.

UEFA Champions League predictions for 2024-25

• Manchester City (25.3%) are ranked as the favourites to win this season's Champions League by the Opta supercomputer.
• Manchester City won the tournament in 2023 after knocking out Pep Guardiola's side on penalties in the quarter-finals last season. They also won an unprecedented fourth consecutive Premier League title.
• The team most likely to stop the English side is defending champions Real Madrid (18.2%), who eliminated Manchester City last season and have reached at least the semi-finals for four consecutive years.
• Italian champions Inter Milan (10.9%) are runners-up to Manchester City in 2023 and are the only team with a chance of more than 10% according to the supercomputer .
• If none of those three teams win, the winner is likely to come from one of the other six close contenders: Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern Munich, Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain.

Champions League favorites

Despite last year's elimination, Manchester City (25.3%) are the favourites to win this season's Champions League according to the Opta supercomputer.

There are 36 teams participating in the league stage, but Guardiola's side are still considered almost certain to fill one of the top spots in the new overall standings. In 21.9% of our simulations, they finished first in 36 categories; in the top four 55.5% of the time; and in the top eight at a huge rate of 77.5%, automatically qualifying for the knockout stage.

It's not hard to make the case that City are favourites to win the title. Excluding penalty shootouts, they are unbeaten in their last 23 Champions League games, winning 16 of them, and if they avoid defeat in their first two games of the 2024-25 campaign, they will equal the longest unbeaten run in the tournament's history, matching rivals Manchester United's 25-match unbeaten run that ended in May 2009.

Guardiola also loves the competition, with the Catalan having the best win rate (63.7%) of all managers to oversee 50 or more Champions League games, with 109 wins in 171 games.

Once we get to the knockout stages, where City are almost certain to be part of the knockout rounds (95.2%), they are expected to flourish again. They are likely to continue to triumph even against the continent's best opposition, with half of them having a chance of at least reaching the semi-finals in our UCL simulation (55.0%). City reach the final at a 39.9% rate and lift the trophy at a 25.3% probability.

If a team has any realistic hope of winning the Champions League, they will likely need to find a way to eliminate Manchester City, just as Real Madrid did last season.

Real Madrid wins the UCL again in our simulation with a probability of 18.2%. This is an impressive pre-match win rate, and Real Madrid usually wins if there is no strong opponent like Manchester City.

Adding Mbappe to a Champions League-winning team would be a daunting challenge for other contenders. The former Paris Saint-Germain forward is joint top scorer with Harry Kane in the 2023-24 season and, at the age of 25, has already scored 48 Champions League goals in his career, enough to ensure he is among the top 10 scorers in the competition's history.

Real Madrid have a 48.9% chance of reaching the semi-finals for five consecutive seasons, while they appear in the 2025 final at the Allianz Arena at a healthy 31.6%.

With a predicted total of 16.7 points in the league section, they have a good chance (74.0%) of automatically finishing in the top eight and then becoming a team that rival teams desperately try to avoid in the latter stages.

Inter Milan (10.9%) are the only team to enter the tournament with a Champions League win rate of over 10%.

Simone Inzaghi's side were beaten by Atletico Madrid in the first knockout round last season, but it was a very close game that was settled on penalties. Inter did win the Serie A title last season and reached the UCL final a year ago, with many believing they were unlucky to lose to Manchester City in Istanbul.

Inter have an 86.2% chance of reaching the round of 16 (the top eight automatically advance in 54.4% of cases), they make it all the way to the semi-finals in 36.7% of simulations and the final in 21.2%.

Manchester City and Real Madrid are the clear frontrunners, but there is also a considerable gap between Inter Milan and the rest of the chasers, so this season's predictions show that the supercomputer has shown great confidence in the Italian champions.

Therefore, their matches against Manchester City and Arsenal in the league stage should be worth watching.

Other Champions League contenders

The six teams are evenly matched in the latter groups and they all start the tournament with realistic hopes of starting a long journey.

Arsenal, Barcelona, Leverkusen, Bayern Munich, Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain are the teams in question, all with chances of winning the match ranging between 4.1% and 6.3%.

Of this group, Arsenal performed best in our simulation by a narrow margin, meaning they were fourth most likely to win overall.

In a statistic that will not please Premier League teams, Arsenal are the team to have played the most matches (197) in European Cup/UEFA Champions League history without ever winning the trophy.

But at least they are very consistent, having qualified from the group stage in each of their last 15 games. The Gunners once again reach the last 16 in our simulation this time around, with a 76.5% chance of success.

They have reached the final 13.2% of the time and have won the game at a rate of 6.3%, so Mikel Arteta’s side do have a chance of getting into the competition.

Barcelona's prediction model is also bullish on the Catalan club this season. In Robert Lewandowski, Barca have a striker who has scored 94 career Champions League goals, and with the appointment of Hansi Flick, Barca have paired one of the competition's greatest strikers with a Champions League-winning coach.

According to Opta's schedule difficulty ranking, Barcelona has the fourth-best schedule in the league phase and is actually more likely than teams like Inter Milan and Arsenal to finish at the top of the 36-team table with an 8.9% chance of winning, with a projected 15.1 points.

It would be a big shock if Barca didn't make the last 16 (83.3%) and from then on they will be looking to make a bigger impact in the knockout stages than in previous seasons.

Bayern Munich also got a good draw - the second easiest according to our aforementioned analysis of the difficulty of each team's schedule. They reach the last 16 with a high rate of 80.3%, with only four teams considered more likely to qualify.

But interestingly, Vincent Kompany's side are deemed less likely to win the title at 4.1% than domestic rivals Bayer Leverkusen (5.4%) , who ended Bayern's 11-year Bundesliga dominance last season and now look a force to be reckoned with on the continent.

Xabi Alonso's side's early games against Inter Milan, Liverpool, Atletico Madrid and AC Milan will be highly anticipated as they look to prove they can live up to such high demands.

Liverpool, returning to the Europa League a year later, are seventh with odds of 4.2%.

The Reds have a 31.7% chance of finishing in the top eight and automatically qualifying, with a predicted total of 13 points. Those numbers might not look too impressive, but that's largely due to a tough draw that was rated as the third most difficult draw overall.

To surpass that number and improve their hopes of finishing in the top eight under new boss Arne Slaughter, Liverpool will likely need a positive result against Real Madrid, against whom they have a poor recent record - drawing just one and losing seven in eight previous encounters, including the last two UCL finals.

On the plus side, Mohamed Salah has been in fine form at the start of the Premier League season and he has generally performed well in Europe. His 41 Champions League goals for Liverpool are the most by any player for an English club.

PSG have yet to cross the finish line in the Champions League, and their cause in the 2024-25 campaign has not been helped by the departure of Kylian Mbappe and a brutal initial schedule, which our model rates as the toughest.

They will have to play Manchester City, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid and Arsenal in eight league games, so they are considered more likely to reach the play-offs for ninth to 24th place (56.4%) than to finish in the top eight (27.6%). However, if they can get through the early stages of the competition, the system thinks they are a team that can still do some damage.

Best of the rest

If a team outside the top nine wins the Champions League, it would be a major surprise for the Opta supercomputer, but the system hasn't completely dampened the hopes of some other high-profile players.

Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig and Sporting CP all have a chance of winning of more than 1 in 50.

Europa League champions Atalanta and returning Juventus are not far behind in the standings, with both Italian sides considered more likely to reach the last 16.

Of the six teams, Borussia Dortmund (13.9 predicted points), Atletico Madrid (13.0 points) and Atalanta (12.9 points) are most likely to impress early in the league. They have a 41.5%, 31.2% and 30.7% chance of automatically reaching the top eight, respectively.

Atletico have been busy in the transfer market, hoping that once the later stages arrive, they will be in the mix. According to our prediction model, they have a 30.5% chance of reaching the quarter-finals, while Dortmund's odds are even higher at 35.4%. However, the German side's chances of reaching the final again are only 5.7%.

No other team in the competition has more than a 1% chance of winning the match, so the remaining 21 clubs can certainly be considered upsets.

Champions League upsets

Given the competitiveness and financial strength of the Premier League, it may come as a surprise to some that Aston Villa are firmly in the middle of the table, below the likes of Sporting CP, Monaco, PSV Eindhoven and Benfica.

Villa have just an 11.3% chance of automatically qualifying for the last 16 from the top eight, with a greater chance of reaching the play-offs (53.9%) if they finish between ninth and 24th.

Villa are predicted to collect just 10.4 points in their eight games but there is some reason to be optimistic. The matchday 1 clash against Young Boys gives them the chance to get off to a much-needed strong start and despite having to face Bayern and Juventus, Villa have the fifth easiest schedule.

The last time an English team was newly promoted was Leicester City in the 2016-17 season, who beat Club Brugge in their first match, and Brugge are one of Villa's eight opponents this time around. Capitalising on such games will be vital.

Having Emery on board will certainly help Villa too. Villa is his sixth different team to have managed in the Champions League, with only Real Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti (8) having managed more, not counting Emery's huge European success in the Europa League.

Another team that was hit by the Champions Leaue draw was Celtic. The Scottish champions had the easiest schedule of all 36 teams, with an average opponent rating of 87.4. The least lucky team, Paris Saint-Germain, had opponents rated five points higher at 92.4.

Celtic made their 28th appearance in the European Cup/Champions League, second only to Manchester United (30 appearances) among English teams.

They have struggled recently, failing to qualify from their group for five consecutive times, while manager Brendan Rodgers has won just three of his 24 games.

But the new format and draw could help the Celtics, who are projected to finish with a total of 9.7 points and a 57.2% chance of finishing in the top 24 (7.3% for the top eight and 49.9% for the play-offs).

It meant Celtic could go into the game with real excitement, although a fast start was essential against Slovan Bratislava, the weakest team in the tournament.

Meanwhile, seven-time champions Milan must beat the odds to make an impact this season, having crashed out of a tough group last season. In our simulations, they reached the last 16 just 44.7% of the time and were ranked the 20th most likely winners.

Champions League debut

As for all the teams making their debuts, Girona have the best chance of getting a decent result after their impressive La Liga season a year ago.

Girona are considered more likely to win the match than Milan, but that is more a reflection of the system working against the Rossoneri.

Michel's team, ranked 16th overall, could realistically aim to at least finish in the top 16, which they did 48.8% of the time in our simulations. Of all 36 teams, they and Milan are the two most likely to play in the play-offs between 9th and 24th.

Bologna (52.8%) are also likely to make the play-offs, but French Ligue 1 side Brest will do well to go further. They are in the bottom 12 with 63.1% and are expected to pick up just eight points from as many games.

Unfortunately for fellow newcomers Slovan Bratislava , they are one of four teams that have not even won a single match in our 10,000 simulations. The others are Crvena Zvezda, Shakhtar Donetsk and Young Boys, while the other three – Brest, Sturm Graz and Salzburg – have won their matches at a rate of just 0.01%.

It could be a very difficult couple of months for Slovan, who face a tough task facing Manchester City in their first home game after the trip to Celtic. They have a 28.2% chance of finishing 36th out of 36 teams - for context, the second most likely team to finish bottom has a much lower chance (11.9% for Shakhtar).

In 75.3% of our simulations, Slovakia finished in the bottom six, and they’ve only made the last 16 121 times out of 10,000 teams, so this might be a good time to reflect on what a remarkable job Slovakia has done just to get this far, to make the tournament for the first time in 12 attempts.