Liverpool, Real Madrid, Chelsea, PSG: Who are Champions League favourites? | OneFootball

The Champions League round of 16 draw was concluded on Monday morning with plenty of fascinating ties to whet the appetite of supporters pulled out of the hat.

UEFA’s famous anthem might not be blaring out in stadium’s across the continent for another few months, but supporters of the 16 clubs still competing in Europe now know the next hurdle they’ve go to clear if their dreams are to come true.

The most eye-catching fixture to come out of the pot sees a re-run of last season’s final with an inconsistent Liverpool side hoping to exact revenge upon their bogey team in Real Madrid.

The 2022/23 Champions League round of 16 draw

Meanwhile, a Paris Saint-Germain outfit looking better than ever with Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Neymar finally working in harmony will lock horns with Julian Nagelsmann’s Bayern Munich.

There’s also a tasty clash in the form of Chelsea vs Borussia Dortmund and plenty of hope for this year’s underdogs as Club Brugge and Benfica do battle, while Eintracht Frankfurt and Napoli slug it out.

So, there’s plenty to salivate over as we wade our way through the World Cup and return to club action in the New Year.

And there’s still plenty that we can infer about the draw in the mean time.

That’s because the data experts over at FiveThirtyEight have updated their predictive model on the 2022/23 Champions League in line with the ramifications of the round of 16 draw.

For those unaware, FiveThirtyEight uses a complex algorithm – which you can read more about here – to weight the quality of the world’s best teams and therefore calculate the percentage likelihood of them achieving certain things.

So, the moral of the story is that we can now see how likely it is that each of the 16 teams left in the Champions League will lift ‘Big Ears’ above their head at the Atatürk Olympic Stadium on June 10.

Who are favourites to win the Champions League?

In other words, how much do the statistics fancy the chances of your team going all the way this season? Well, you can find out by seeing how FiveThirtyEight ranks every remaining side by their hopes of winning down below:

16. Club Brugge: <1%

15. Eintracht Frankfurt: 1%

14. RB Leipzig: 2%

13. Borussia Dortmund: 2%

12. AC Milan: 2%

11. Inter Milan: 3%

10. Tottenham Hotspur: 3%

9. FC Porto: 4%

8. Chelsea: 4%

7. Napoli: 5%

6. Benfica: 5%

5. Paris Saint-Germain: 7%

4. Real Madrid: 8%

3. Liverpool: 8%

2. Bayern Munich: 22%

Man City and Bayern Munich set the standard

A tale of two teams then, huh? Very interesting.

It’s a huge vote of confidence for Bayern from the statisticians when you consider that their percentage chance of going all the way, which stood at 25% back on October 30, has barely faltered despite PSG being pulled out of the hat.

The Parisians, by contrast, have seen their hopes dashed from 11% to 7% both by way of drawing Bayern in the round of 16 and courtesy of finishing second in their group in the first place.

Elsewhere and Manchester City remain the hot favourites, as they have for so many years now, to be crowned European champions despite infamously having failed in their quest up until this point.

Liverpool and Real Madrid can’t be separated

Meanwhile, Liverpool and Real Madrid seem to be entirely evenly matched with both sides given a 8% chance of winning the tournament just as they’re both awarded a 50% likelihood of progressing to the quarter-finals.

In layman’s terms, the data analysts can’t decide between Los Blancos and the Reds when it comes to their round of 16 clash, which just goes to show how great of a match-up it really is.

And let’s not sleep on Benfica who, on the back of besting PSG in Group H, have been backed to the hilt by the data who sees the little-fancied Portuguese side as more likely to win the whole shebang than even Chelsea, Tottenham and the Milan clubs.

However, as we all know, the Champions League isn’t simply decided in spreadsheets, so as fascinating as these numbers might be, you just know that they’ll be plenty of shocks and upsets to mess up the maths between now and June.

Who do you think will lift the Champions League aloft in Istanbul? Let us know.

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