Champions League Predictions: Man City Favourites to Repeat

Who will win the Champions League in 2023-24? We check in with the Opta supercomputer to see its latest Champions League predictions.

8 April

The latter stages of the UEFA Champions League are upon us, but which clubs are backed as the favourites by the Opta supercomputer?

Who Will Win the Champions League? The Quick Hits

• Manchester City, who face Real Madrid in a gargantuan quarter-final, are made the favourites to go on and retain their crown, with a 28.3% probability of winning the competition.
• Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain are next in the list – though Los Blancos will surely be fancied the most should they overcome City.
• Bayern Munich’s Bundesliga title hopes are all but over, and the chances of Harry Kane finishing his first season in Germany without a trophy are high. The Bavarian giants are handed just a 6.2% likelihood of going all the way.

Manchester City

Should the suggestion of seeds for the next version of the Champions League – which is set to begin from next season – come to pass, then perhaps the two favourites would be prevented from meeting each other until the final. But in the current format, the draw has served up a mouthwatering clash between Man City and Real Madrid in the quarters.

Having faced Madrid in the semi-finals in both 2022 and 2023, City are looking to nudge into a 2-1 lead in the head-to-head record in this series.

And despite going up against the 14-time European champions, Pep Guardiola’s team are still backed to go on and win the trophy once again, with their 28.3% probability of becoming champions over 13% higher than any other team.

City are given a 60% chance of progressing to the semi-finals, and a 41.2% probability of making it to their third final in the space of four seasons.

Real Madrid

Slightly ahead of PSG as second favourites behind City are Real Madrid. Carlo Ancelotti’s European monolith are given a 15% chance of winning the Champions League in 2023-24.

Madrid have only been behind on the scoreboard for 26 minutes in the Champions League this season – the fewest of any side.

Vinícius Júnior is their man to fear. Since the start of the 2021-22 campaign, he’s been directly involved in more goals than any other player in the Champions League (27 – 14 goals, 13 assists).

In the same period, he also leads all players in the competition for completed dribbles (97) and progressive carries (373).

Jude Bellingham, meanwhile, has either scored (four) or assisted (four) in all six of his Champions League games for Real Madrid

Los Blancos have a 40% chance of overcoming City across their two-legged tie, while their chances of making the 2024 final are ranked at 23.8%.

Paris Saint-Germain

As a result of Real Madrid getting drawn against the holders, it is PSG who our model fancies as one of the next-best picks. The Parisians have a 14.7% likelihood of becoming champions of Europe, and were one of the biggest beneficiaries of getting drawn on the other side of the draw to the ‘big four’ back in March.

There’s a reunion with Luis Enrique’s former club Barcelona – who he led to Champions League glory in 2015 – on the cards in the last eight, and with Kylian Mbappé having netted four UCL goals against Barça (a tally bettered by only Thomas Müller and Andriy Shevchenko), PSG are well fancied (57%) to progress to a semi-final against either Atlético Madrid or Borussia Dortmund.

And with Atleti or Dortmund next up, should they make it past Barça, PSG have more than a one-in-three chance of reaching this season’s final (35.9%).

A word of warning, though. PSG, of course, suffered their heaviest defeat in the Champions League when they lost 6-1 to Barcelona at Camp Nou in 2017, when the Blaugrana, coached by Luis Enrique at the time, fought back from a 4-0 defeat in the first leg of a last-16 tie.

Arsenal

The Gunners might be leading the Premier League, but their chances of winning the Champions League are rated almost as half as likely as City’s, at 13.6%. It is Arsenal (185), that have played the most games in UCL history without winning the competition, don’t forget.

The Gunners face Bayern in the quarters, and of course that means Kane has the chance to do the damage against his old club’s former rivals. The England captain has scored 14 goals in 19 appearances against Arsenal. He has only scored more times against Leicester (20) and Everton (16) in his professional career.

Kane also has the joint-most goals by a visiting player at the Emirates Stadium (five), along with Diogo Jota and Jamie Vardy.

Mikel Arteta’s team are made big favourites to condemn Kane to another trophyless campaign, though, with our model giving them a 58.5% chance of progressing to the last four. Arsenal’s likelihood of making the final is 22.9%.

This will be Arsenal’s first game in the quarter-finals of the Champions League since 2009-10, when they lost 6-3 on aggregate against Guardiola’s Barcelona. Indeed, the Gunners have only progressed from two of their seven quarter-final ties in the European Cup/UEFA Champions League to date.

Barcelona

We’re into the single digits now, with Barcelona coming in as fifth favourites at 9%.

They are given a 43% chance of making it past PSG, but then a 24.6% chance of making it to the final. Again, a relatively favourable draw plays a part in that, given they have avoided either Man City or Real Madrid.

Barcelona’s meeting with PSG is their first Champions League quarter-final tie since August 2020, when they went down 8-2 to Bayern in what was their heaviest ever defeat in European competition.

They’ve only progressed from the last eight in one of their last five attempts (2018-19, vs Manchester United).

Borussia Dortmund

BVB got the better of PSV in the last round, and having got the better of Bayern at the end of March, Edin Terzić’s team are Germany’s big hope for European success according to the Opta supercomputer.

Perhaps surprisingly given Atlético’s European pedigree under Diego Simeone, Dortmund are made favourites to make it through that tie, at 56.3%.

They are given a 23.3% likelihood of then beating their semi-final opponents and making it into the final, though their chances of winning the showpiece match are ranked at a lowly 8.3%.

Dortmund have only won one of their last 10 away games in the knockout stages of the Champions League, suffering defeats in eight of those (D1). Their last away win at the quarter-final stage of the competition was in March 1997 (1-0 vs Auxerre), going winless in their last five quarter-finals played on the road (D2 L3).

Bayern Munich

Make no bones about it, despite Kane’s record-breaking campaign, it has been a miserable season for Bayern. Thomas Tuchel will be desperate to salvage something by dragging his team to European glory before heading off into the sunset.

But it seems unlikely, and our model does not give Bayern much hope. Indeed, the supercomputer rates their chances of going all the way at just 6.2%. That’s quite something given they have the world’s best centre-forward leading their line.

Going up against Arsenal will be no easy challenge. Should Bayern get the better of the Gunners – which they have a 41.5% chance of doing – they are then given just a 12.1% likelihood of overcoming either Man City or Real Madrid.

Atlético Madrid

Last on this list – but perhaps that’s where Simeone would want them to be? – are Atlético Madrid.

Fourth in La Liga, Atleti defeated last season’s runners-up, and runaway Serie A leaders Inter, in the last 16. Despite that, they remain our least likely winners.

They may well get the better of Dortmund, with a 43.7% chance of doing just that, but Simeone’s team, who have twice finished as runners-up in the Champions League in the last decade, are then handed just a 16.2% likelihood of progressing to the final.

Their current chances of winning the UEFA Champions League? Just 5%.

How Does the Opta Supercomputer Model Work?

• The model estimates the probability of each match outcome (win, draw or loss) by using betting market odds and Opta Power Rankings. The odds and rankings are based on historical and recent team performances.

• The model considers the strength of opponents by using these match outcome probabilities and simulates the remaining fixtures in the competition thousands of times. By analysing the outcome of each of these simulations, the model can see how often teams finished in each position to create our final predictions.

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