play3:03Do teams understand how to play against PSG now?The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Sporting CP’s 2-1 victory of Paris Saint Germain in the UEFA Champions League.
play2:05Burnley: Why are the Man City players refunding the fans?ESPN’s Craig Burley doesn’t believe the Manchester City players should be refunding the fans after their 3-1 defeat to Bodø/Glimt in the UEFA Champions League.
play1:25Can Barcelona cope if Pedri’s injury is long term?The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Pedri coming off injured in Barcelona’s 4-2 victory over Slavia Prague in the UEFA Champions League.
play2:54Do Arsenal have the best squad in Europe?The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Arsenal’s 3-1 victory over Inter Milan in the UEFA Champions League.
play1:55Was Liverpool’s victory vs. Marseille their best performance of the season?The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Liverpool’s dominant 3-0 victory over Marseille in the UEFA Champions League.
Q1. OK, with one game left to advance, which club faces the biggest do-or-die fixture in MD8 considering the table?
Q2. Speaking of Manchester City, they seem to be imploding on multiple fronts, losing ground to Arsenal in the Premier League and taking a weakened side to the Arctic Circle in MD7 where they were comprehensively beaten by Bodø/Glimt. Antoine Semenyo and Guéhi have arrived to reinforce things, but is that enough for Guardiola to work his way out of this jam?
Q3. Barça keep leaking goals — six in their last four games, including two bad concessions at Slavia Prague — while Madrid’s fans continued to voice their displeasure at Vinícius Júnior and Jude Bellingham despite the big win over AS Monaco. Which Spanish team is best-placed to win it or make the deepest run?
Q4. Five English teams are in the Top 8, and that could be six by the end of the league phase. Is that a problem for UEFA? Is the Premier League’s dominance here to stay?
And finally, a little look-in at Liverpool. Mohamed Salah has returned to the first-team squad after the Africa Cup of Nations — after his incendiary interview that made us all think he was leaving the club this winter — and the Reds picked up a 3-0 win at Marseille, but is there sufficient cause for celebration? And where does Salah — who had 28 touches in a fairly quiet 90 minutes — fit in this team both this season and beyond?
Why are Man City struggling defensively? (1:56)The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Manchester City’s shocking 3-1 defeat to FK Bodø/Glimt in the UEFA Champions League. (1:56)
Do teams understand how to play against PSG now?The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Sporting CP’s 2-1 victory of Paris Saint Germain in the UEFA Champions League.
The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Sporting CP’s 2-1 victory of Paris Saint Germain in the UEFA Champions League.
Burnley: Why are the Man City players refunding the fans?ESPN’s Craig Burley doesn’t believe the Manchester City players should be refunding the fans after their 3-1 defeat to Bodø/Glimt in the UEFA Champions League.
ESPN’s Craig Burley doesn’t believe the Manchester City players should be refunding the fans after their 3-1 defeat to Bodø/Glimt in the UEFA Champions League.
Can Barcelona cope if Pedri’s injury is long term?The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Pedri coming off injured in Barcelona’s 4-2 victory over Slavia Prague in the UEFA Champions League.
The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Pedri coming off injured in Barcelona’s 4-2 victory over Slavia Prague in the UEFA Champions League.
Do Arsenal have the best squad in Europe?The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Arsenal’s 3-1 victory over Inter Milan in the UEFA Champions League.
Was Liverpool’s victory vs. Marseille their best performance of the season?The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Liverpool’s dominant 3-0 victory over Marseille in the UEFA Champions League.
The ESPN ‘FC TV’ crew react to Liverpool’s dominant 3-0 victory over Marseille in the UEFA Champions League.
We’re racing fast towards the end of the UEFA Champions League league phase, and the scramble for positions is really starting to heat up.
Arsenal sit pretty atop the standings with an unblemished record after sailing past Internazionale but below that? That’s where it really gets interesting.
Tottenham Hotspur are in a gravity-defying fifth spot, while Manchester City’s shock loss to Bodø/Glimt leaves them out of the Top 8. Then there are some big clubs — hello Napoli — in danger of being eliminated entirely.
With just one round of matches left for teams on the bubble to punch their tickets to the knockout phase, read on as ESPN experts Rob Dawson, Sam Tighe, Julien Laurens and Gab Marcotti offer their thoughts on Matchday 7.
Tighe: Paris Saint-Germain and Newcastle United are sixth and seventh in the table after seven games. They share the fourth-best goal difference in the competition so far (+10) and are effectively sitting pretty. But they play each other on the final matchday, in Paris, and the reality is that the loser will get dumped into the playoffs. If they draw, they’ll probably both slip in — Chelsea, Barcelona, and Manchester City are just some of the teams that could leapfrog them in that situation.
Now, as last season proves, slipping down into that playoff mire isn’t necessarily terminal: PSG did so, beat Brest 10-0 on aggregate and used it as a bounceboard to go on and win the whole thing.
But adding games to the schedule is not a good plan, and for Newcastle in particular, it could prove really damaging to their ability to manage the load.
The upshot? They need a bunch of other results to go their way AND they need to win in the Bernabéu. No matter. Mourinho won many times at the Bernabéu before (OK, mostly while managing Real Madrid, but still…) and, against this star-crossed version of Madrid, who’s to say he can’t summon up enough of the old black magic to spring the improbable, if not the impossible?
Dawson: Man City vs. Galatasaray. City will make it to the knockout rounds whatever happens, but they’ll have bad memories of what can happen if you don’t finish in the Top 8. Last season, they were forced into a playoff with Real Madrid and were comfortably dumped out. Pep Guardiola won’t want to risk a repeat.
Dawson: Man City aren’t playing well, but Guardiola won’t be panicking just yet. The team is in a difficult moment after poor performances against Manchester United and Bodø/Glimt. They’re damaging defeats for different reasons, but the problems aren’t terminal.
Guardiola has been forced into pairing Khusanov and Alleyne at center back in the absence of Gvardiol and Dias. Alleyne was playing in the Championship as recently as New Year’s Day; to that end, Guéhi solves a big issue and Dias will be back soon. Rodri’s form is troublesome, but Nico González has been much better this season and shouldn’t be too far away from making his return from injury.
Burnley: Why are the Man City players refunding the fans?
Laurens: After what we saw against Man United on Saturday, there was no real surprise to see City struggling even more in the grueling Arctic Circle conditions, on a plastic pitch, and against a good team much fresher than them: Bodø/Glimt’s last official game was six weeks ago.
Good luck to Pep in trying to sort out all of those problems. This is as bad a Man City team as we have seen since … October 2024, the last time they endured such a frustrating run of form.
Marcotti: Rob is correct that Pep won’t be panicking (weirdly, panicking rarely helps) and that the situation is still open (yes, they can still win the Quadruple … though I wouldn’t bet the mortgage on it). But the issues are evident and, as Juls writes, go beyond the Bodø/Glimt defeat, which was a classic “trap” game.
Guéhi helps because he’s probably better than any central defender on City’s books (except Gvardiol, maybe), but it still means hitting the ground running by moving from a back-three to a back-four in mid-season. That’s not always easy to do, especially in a congested schedule. Semenyo is a live body who does many things well, though I’m not sure he moves the needle straight away. And then there’s the elephant (OK, large Norwegian) in the room and his poor form.
Dawson: It’s always hard to look beyond Real Madrid in the Champions League. Even in a turbulent season you wouldn’t bet against them. The LaLiga title will be decided by consistency. The Champions League is different. More so than in domestic games, European knockout ties are decided by moments. And the one thing Real Madrid have is big players who can create magic in big moments.
It’s not to say that Barcelona don’t have good players — of course they do. But there are tight and tense games in the latter rounds of the Champions League and sometimes you’re left needing a goal out of nothing. Real Madrid have more of that type of player than any other team in Europe, which is perhaps why they’ve had such a successful history in the competition.
Tighe: I really want to stay true to my preseason Champions League winner pick in Barcelona, making this a 2-2 split between us … but I can’t do it. I’m just too spooked by Pedri’s hamstrings! He pulled up again on Matchday 7, which is terrible news considering Barça may need to win next week to secure a Top 8 spot.
Dawson: Based purely on revenues, wage bills and transfer spending, the Champions League table looks the way it should be. The Super League exists, it just goes by a different name. It’s not always followed that Premier League clubs have been able to use their financial might to dominate in Europe. English clubs have won far fewer Champions League titles over the last 15 years than they should have done.
That said, potentially having six Premier League clubs in the Champions League Top 8 isn’t great for the competition. The whole point of the tournament is pitting clubs from different countries against each other. It would be a shame if, for example, it was an all-English lineup in the semifinals. If you want to watch that, you can see something similar right now with Manchester City, Newcastle, Arsenal and Chelsea facing off in two-legged ties to reach the Carabao Cup final.