Supercomputer predicts Champions League winners

Finally, the supercomputer graces us with its knowledge

The 2024/25 Champions League gets underway this evening as 36 clubs vie to be crowned kings of Europe.

With this season’s tournament marking the start of a bold new era for the competition with its revamped format – which hasn’t gone down too well with players – we’ll have to wait and see of this makes the Champions League any more or less exciting.

But we don’t need to worry about uncertainty over who will win the thing, because that’s been decided for us by the good ol’ supercomputer.

Sure, football might be played on grass, but as we all know, today’s game is decided by stats and cold hard data.

So, before the tournament has even started, let’s congratulate Manchester City on winning the 2024/25 Champions League.

Or Real Madrid.

Or Inter Milan. But probably no one else. According to data.

Opta has unsurprisingly given Pep Guardiola’s men the best chance of winning the Champions League, stating the Manchester side have a 25.3 per cent chance of being crowned champions.

In second place, it’s reigning champions Real Madrid with a 182 per cent chance. whilst Inter Milan are a surprising third with 10.9 per cent, ahead of the likes of Arsenal (4th, 6.3 per cent), Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen (5th, 5.4 per cent) and Barcelona (6th, 5.2 per cent).

Further down the table, tournament debutants Girona are given a 1 per cent chance of emerging with the trophy – just 0.1 less than Italian giants Juventus – whilst 1982 European champions Aston Villa are given a 0.2 per cent chance of winning a second European title.

And nine clubs might as well not bother turning up according to Opta, as they have a 0 per cent chance of winning the Champions League. These are Celtic, Dinamo Zagreb, Salzburg, Sturm Graz, Brest, Crvena Zvezda (Red Star Belgrade), Shakhtar Donetsk, Slovan Bratislava and Young Boys.

Opta came up with these figures after running 10,000 simulations of the 2024/25 Champions League and tallying the results.

Along with the chances of each side winning, they’ve also worked out which teams have the easiest and toughest set of group stage fixtures.

According to the number crunchers, it’s Celtic who have the easiest eight group stage matches (opponent average rating of 87.4 out of 100), with PSG handed the most difficult set of matches (92.4 out of 100).

All that’s left to do now is sit back and watch how accurate these numbers prove to be.