Who will win the Champions League? Anyone but you.
The truth is that even at this stage of the competition, with only 16 teams left, the likelihood of everyone being eliminated at some point is higher than winning.
Want to listen to betting markets? At bookmakers, Manchester City is the favorite with odds somewhere around plus-170 – or well below 50%. Prefer a public predictive model? How about FiveThirtyEight? Well, their favorite is Bayern Munich with a whopping… 22% chance of winning.
Pick a winner today and you’ll probably get it wrong, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. As in previous years, we will look at the statistical profiles (at home) of the last 10 winners to create a kind of baseline profile of what it took to win the Champions League. While that may not lead us to a winner – were Bayern Munich and, um, Ajax selected last year? – the exercise should at least give us an idea of who looks the part and who doesn’t, and what could potentially prevent some favorites from going all the way.
Before we get to that, a few apologies to Benfica, Porto and Club Brugge. A non-Big Five team has not even reached a Champions League final since 2004. After being too enamored with Ajax’s artificial dominance at home last season, we’re eliminating all non-Big Five teams until one of them gives us a reason to. Now for the remaining 13…
Unless otherwise noted, all data provided by Stats Perform. Everything is valid until February 10th.
Source: www.espn.com
