Ranking the Champions League field: Can anyone stop PSG or Barcelona?

Welcome to Year 4 of the Champions League rankings, where I ... rank all the teams in the Champions League.

This year is notable for one specific reason: Manchester City are not No. 1. In fact, they're not even close to being No. 1. City have been the favorites to win the European Cup in six of the past seven seasons, and they were second favorites the only time they weren't No. 1.

Without City leading the way, it's way more open at the top than it has been in a long time. Five clubs can make reasonable cases that they should be the favorites to win it all -- and then there are also a bunch of others that could win it all, too.

- Ogden: UCL storylines to watch this season
- O'Hanlon: Worst 2025 summer transfers, from Cunha to Isak
- UCL draw reaction: Must-see games, easiest/toughest paths

So, who is No. 1 in our rankings? Who is No. 36? And where does everyone land in between? Let's get to the list.

36. Kairat Almaty

The easternmost team to ever play in the Champions League got here with shootout victories in qualifying against Celtic and Slovan Bratislava. Per Transfermarkt, the entire squad maintains a transfer value of about €12.53 million. That's roughly the same as the average player on Benfica, who according to the betting odds, have about a 1-in-200 chance of winning this tournament.

35. FK Qarabag

Based on rough estimates, I'm pretty sure Qarabag would be favored to beat Kairat by around a full goal on a neutral field. That's roughly the same gap as between, say, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

34. Pafos

Remember Mislav Orsic? Only a select few of you will, but he came on in the knockouts against Spain at Euro 2020, scored and assisted on a goal, and sent the game to extra time. He had a hat trick as Dinamo Zagreb eliminated Jose Mourinho's Tottenham from the 2021 Europa League, and he scored the winner in Zagreb's Champions League victory against Chelsea in 2022 in what ended up being Thomas Tuchel's last game in charge of the English club. Orsic scored the winning goal in the third-place match at the 2022 World Cup, with Southampton signing him a month later for €5.75 million.

Anyway, he's 32 and plays for Pafos now.

33. Slavia Prague

Jindrich Trpisovsky has been coaching Slavia Prague since 2017. That seems like forever in the current high-stakes, low-patience managerial environment -- and it gives me an opportunity to mention that Guy Roux managed Auxerre from 1964 to 2000. Yes, you read that right.

32. Bodø/Glimt

Playing their matches near the Arctic Circle, Bodo surely will have an outsize home-field advantage. Playing at home will essentially be equivalent to adding Lionel Messi to the team. Or will the Bodo effect add up to, say, Messi and Dwight McNeil? Messi and Cody Gakpo? Messi and Bukayo Saka?

31. F.C. København

Over the past 22 seasons, Copenhagen have won the Danish league 13 times, and they've never finished lower than third. Over that stretch, their leading scorer has scored 20-plus goals just twice. Last season, they won the league, and their leading scorers were Mohamed Elyounoussi and Jordan Larsson -- with eight goals apiece.

30. Olympiacos

They could have had a fun, sort of old-school creator-scorer pairing with Mehdi Taremi on loan from Inter Milan and Rémy Cabella on loan from Lille. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, Cabella didn't make the Champions League squad list.

29. Club Brugge

The Belgians have one of the youngest teams in the tournament, and they made it to the round of 16 last season, but they lost three players to €20 million or more transfer fees over the summer -- holding midfielder Ardon Jashari to AC Milan, fullback Maxim De Cuyper to Brighton, winger Chemsdine Talbi to Sunderland -- and they've merely been pretty good instead of dominant to start the domestic season. It looks like a bit of a rebuilding year in Brugge.

28. Union St.-Gilloise

They, too, lost a bunch of players (including their top two forwards, Franjo Ivanovic and Mohamed Amoura, plus midfielder Noah Sadiki) to larger teams over the summer, when USG made three of their five biggest transfers ever. But if there's anyone who knows how to lose a couple of stars and actually make the team better, it's the same people who own Brighton. Unlike Brugge, this team has been utterly dominant so far this season.

27. Ajax Amsterdam

You might see the name "Ajax" here and think, "Oh, a fun dark horse!" Allow me to advise you to not do that. The Club Elo ratings are an opponent-, score-, and location-adjusted system that awards or docks a team points after every match it plays based on those factors. Ajax's Elo rating is the fifth worst of any team in the tournament -- above only Kairat, Qarabag, Pafos and Bodo/Glimt.

26. PSV Eindhoven

I can't believe I'm saying this, but can they ... replace Luuk de Jong? PSV were an Eredivisie superteam the past two years with De Jong starting up top. At age 35, he has continued his reverse-career progression and now plays for FC Porto. They're still top of the table in the Eredivisie; they just haven't been nearly as dominant as they've been in years past.

26. Sporting CP

They can't be as good without goal scorer Viktor Gyökeres and manager Ruben Amorim for a full season ... right? Sporting have a ton of defensive talent, so the question is will their new center forward, 27-year-old Luis Suárez, who was last seen playing for Almeria in Spain's second division, have a similar late-career breakout to Gyökeres and suddenly be good enough to play at a Champions League level?

25. Benfica

On pure talent, maybe they should be a little higher. Outside of Álvaro Carreras going to Real Madrid and Ángel Di María going back to Argentina, they haven't had as many major departures as they usually do each offseason. They were every bit as good as Sporting last season when they made the round of 16 in the Champions League.

As with Sporting, the biggest question is whether they'll be able to score enough goals.

24. Marseille

They brought in 15 new players this offseason to a team that finished second in Ligue 1. In some ways, that made sense. They drastically outperformed their underlying numbers, plus they now had to contend with Champions League matches. But that's a lot of turnover, and the limited evidence we have suggests that Roberto De Zerbi is a brilliant tactician and an awful manager of human beings.

Overall, it just seems that there's a ton of downside with this group.

22. Villarreal

This is a very solid team that doesn't have a ton of upside. In its 2-0 loss to Atlético Madrid over the weekend, Nicolas Pépé and Georges Mikautadze started up top. That's a fun pairing -- one post-hype Arsenal prospect, one Ligue 1 creative darling -- but they combined for one shot between them.

21. AS Monaco

Folarin Balogun and Mika Biereth is a fun striker pairing that I believe will catch some opponents off guard because so few teams in this competition play that way. There's a bunch of talent elsewhere, too: winger Maghnes Akliouche, midfielder Lamine Camara and fullback Vanderson could be off to much bigger clubs next summer.

It's surprising that none of them was off to a bigger club this summer. Maybe a couple of guys will make the leap, and this group will mount a run to the round of 16 or even the quarters.

20. Galatasaray

Monaco and Galatasaray are the two teams I'm most worried I'm underrating. Galatasaray have Victor Osimhen and Leroy Sané. These aren't two over-the-hill stars like we've seen gathered in Istanbul previously -- no, Osimhen is only 26 and Sane is 29. These are better players than those on any team we've already mentioned, or on any of the clubs we're about to mention.

19. Eintracht Frankfurt

It's a bummer that we never got to see the Hugo Ekitike and Omar Marmoush version of this team give it a go in the Champions League. But, well, the fact that this team had both of those players last season goes a long way toward explaining why they're in the competition this season. Frankfurt created the second-most expected goals of anyone in the Bundesliga last season, but were middle of the pack for expected goals conceded.

If they can keep the train moving without Marmoush and Ekitike, Dino Toppmoller is going to make a lot of money to coach someone else next summer.

18. Bayer Leverkusen

It has been pretty much the worst start to the season imaginable for the post-Xabi Alonso era, but Leverkusen dominated Frankfurt last Friday despite playing a man down for a third of the match. There's still a ton of uncertainty here given all of the roster churn and the fact that they are already on their second coach of the season, so it seems right that they're ranked almost directly in the middle of the field.

17. Atalanta

Roughly, I'd say PSV down to Atalanta is one large tier of teams that will be disappointed if they don't make it out of the league phase, but whose progress beyond that is largely dependent on what kind of knockout round draw they get. Atalanta just missed a bye last season by finishing ninth in the league phase, and then they were upset by Club Brugge in the knockout phase playoffs.

Now they're without Gian Piero Gasperini on the sidelines, so I doubt they'll finish as high again this season, but they could make it a round further and it wouldn't be a shock.

16. Borussia Dortmund

If Serhou Guirassy remains one of the best strikers in the world, they'll be a tough out. But it continues to be shocking how low Dortmund's ceiling is every season. They have no real potential super-prospects, just a bunch of decent dudes in their mid-20s or later.

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How Frank has improved Tottenham since taking over from Postecoglou

Janusz Michallik assesses Thomas Frank's impact at Tottenham after their 3-0 win vs. West Ham.

15. Tottenham Hotspur

There's a chance Spurs deserve to be in that previous tier from PSV to Atalanta, as I'm still not really sure what to make of them. They played City well on the road but then got thrashed by Bournemouth at home. (It was only 1-0, but they got outshot 20-5.) That's sandwiched by two 3-0 wins against two of the worst teams in the league (West Ham and Burnley), where they scored nearly double the combined expected goals they created.

Could Thomas Frank's chaos-embracing approach catch continental clubs off guard? Will Spurs struggle to generate chances against organized opponents? Both of those things might be true.

14. Athletic Club

They've conceded just two expected goals total across their first four matches, and they have the best xG differential of anyone in LaLiga. We shouldn't read too much into a four-game stretch, but we also shouldn't ignore it. Bilbao are going to be awful to play against at home, they're one of the better defensive sides in the world, and they've still got the Williams brothers, Nico and Iñaki, playing up top. The upside might not be there, but their team makes more sense than anyone behind them in these rankings.

13. Juventus

Juve's 4-3 win over Inter this past weekend was more like a 1-1 in which every time someone kicked a ball, it found the top corner. But I loved the Loïs Openda signing; he could be an upgrade on the one-dimensional Dusan Vlahovic. Jonathan David is an effective player who gives you a little bit of everything, and Juve have a couple of young, creative contributors, Kenan Yildiz and Francisco Conceição, who could break out this season.

At the very least, they're more interesting than they were last season, when Thiago Motta seemed as if he'd instituted a teamwide rule where they needed to complete 500 passes before attempting a shot.

12. Newcastle United

I was tempted to put them even higher in this ranking, but I didn't because I'm not convinced Eddie Howe still knows how to manage playing in two major competitions at once or that the physical, let's-make-this-a-track-meet way they play is sustainable across a full season. At the same time, how many teams in the world are doing this to Liverpool when they're down a man for the entire second half?

The Barcelona game at St. James's Park this Thursday should be incredible. But their success in Europe will likely be determined by what they're able to do when they go away from home.

11. Atlético Madrid

Were I basing this just on this season, they'd be significantly lower. They have one win from four games and a middling xG differential. I also think the club underestimated how important Rodrigo De Paul was to everything it did. Pretty much every passing move that ended up in the opposition penalty area involved him making a key pass at some point in the possession.

The way they attacked last season was like a precision-passing offense in the NFL; it required perfect timing and understanding from multiple players. That might be hard to regain, but Diego Simeone almost always has this team competing at a high level in this competition by late winter or early spring.

10. Internazionale

While Atlético have at least gotten younger recently, Inter Milan continue to be the oldest team in the Champions League, season after season. They lost manager Simone Inzaghi and the only consistent contributor they added was Manuel Akanji, who is 30 years old. They also haven't been great in Serie A so far. But they did beat Bayern Munich and Barcelona last season, and although they got embarrassed, they still did make the Champions League final.

Slotting them in at 10 is still a significant downgrade from where they were last season.

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Marcotti: Højlund a 'better version' at Napoli than Man United

Gab Marcotti reacts to Rasmus Højlund's debut goal for Napoli after joining on loan from Manchester United.

9. Napoli

This would be the last team that I would be surprised to see win the Champions League. I think Napoli, Juventus, Atléti and Newcastle all have a shot, but it would take some luck and a favorable draw to reach the top. Napoli were good last season, but I'm not buying Scott McTominay as an impact player in the Champions League until I see it. Also not buying Rasmus Højlund as an impact player in the Champions League. Plus, Romelu Lukaku is out until December. Also, they're so old!

I know Antonio Conte doesn't have a great track record in the Champions League, but this is going to be the most organized team in the competition, and Napoli will do whatever it takes to get the most out of whatever is left in Kevin De Bruyne's legs.

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Marcotti: Chelsea are still too dependent on Cole Palmer

Gab Maroctti questions Chelsea's attacking approach against Brentford after Cole Palmer looked to have been Chelsea's only creative spark.

8. Chelsea

I think there's a clear top eight this season and a clear top five. Despite winning the Club World Cup and getting to wear a patch that says they're the best team in the world, we still need to see them do it against the actual best teams in the world. My concerns: The defensive talent isn't at the level of any of the teams above them and it's still unclear if João Pedro and Estêvão are Champions League-winning-quality players right now.

This week's match against Bayern Munich should tell us a lot.

7. Manchester City

You couldn't really ask for a better stress test of City's problems with defending in transition than a home date with Conte's Napoli on Matchday 1. The talent at the club, too, just doesn't really compare to the City sides who were favored to win this competition season after season. But even as I can quibble about the likes of Nico O'Reilly, Abdukodir Khusanov and Jérémy Doku, this team still has three guys who have won the Premier League Player of the Year award and another who's the reigning Ballon d'Or winner. Oh, and they have the best coach of the 21st century, too.

6. Bayern Munich

Under Vincent Kompany, Bayern have become the new PSG, where I'm almost going to ignore their Bundesliga performance until they get matched up against some of the other best teams in the world. They're going to wreck the German league: We know that. Kompany's whole approach is premised on having more talent than everyone else -- and that's not an issue at home.

When you add in the long-term injuries to Alphonso Davies and Jamal Musiala, I don't think this team is any better than they were last season. That said, they still employ a lot of really good soccer players. With a front three of Luis Díaz, Harry Kane and Michael Olise, they can beat anyone.

5. Real Madrid

This is where the tier of genuine title contenders begins. Would you be surprised if any of these teams were the consensus best team in the world come the end of the season?

Madrid are fifth here because they were significantly worse than any of these other four teams last season, and we still just have no idea how it's going to look against tougher opposition than they've played thus far. They're controlling the ball and suffocating games in a way we've never really seen from them before; it has led to a bunch of matches where their opponents don't create anything and while Madrid also doesn't create a ton of great chances, it has been enough for their world-class attackers to generate goals.

Put another way, they're perfect in LaLiga, Alonso still hasn't figured out how to use Trent Alexander-Arnold and Jude Bellingham still hasn't played a single minute.

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Are Arsenal emerging as Premier League title favourites?

Ale Moreno believes there was "never a doubt" about Arsenal's dominant 3-0 victory over Nottingham Forest.

4. Arsenal

The Gunners' depth is ridiculous at this point. They go two deep (at least) at every position on the field, and early season injuries to Bukayo Saka and Martin Ødegaard haven't thrown the fan base into an existential crisis like they would've last season. This is the best defensive team in the world, and that gives them a higher floor than any other team. If the set pieces are clicking, they can generate chances like the three teams ahead of them -- and set piece goals count the same as open play ones.

This team could easily win the Champions League, and they could easily win the Premier League. There's barely anything separating the top four teams on this list. The only reason I have Arsenal fourth: Their attackers aren't as good as the ones on the three teams ranked above them on this list.

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Should Liverpool's late winners be a concern for Arne Slot?

Gab Marcotti and Julien Laurens discuss Liverpool's late winner against Burnley as the pair question the champion's recent performances.

3. Liverpool

The start of the season has -- somehow -- gone both as poorly as anyone could've expected and as well as anyone could've hoped.

We'll start with the bad: Florian Wirtz has zero goals and assists. Mohamed Salah has attempted four non-penalty shots -- total. They needed goals in the 83rd minute or later to win all four of their Premier League matches thus far. And despite assembling arguably more attacking talent than any team in the world, they've generated just the eighth-most non-penalty expected goals in their own league.

Now for the good: Alexander Isak still hasn't played a single minute. The defense has still been quite good despite a much more imbalanced personnel distribution than last season. They've already won two of their hardest fixtures of the season: home against Arsenal and away at Newcastle. Despite not really playing well at any point this season, they're bigger favorites to win the league than they were a month ago.

Of course, these are Champions League rankings, but if you think Liverpool will continue to play this poorly, then there's plenty of money to be won by betting on that happening. However, given how good this team was last season and all the upheaval and tragedy at the club this past summer, we should expect them to start rolling at some point.

If they integrate Isak, Wirtz starts contributing and Salah starts averaging more than a shot per game -- all things that seem quite likely to happen -- then this team is going to be scary.

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Garcia: Flick's tough stance paying off for Barcelona

Luis Garcia credits Hansi Flick for being brave enough to drop Raphinha, before bringing him off the bench in Barcelona's 6-0 win.

2. Barcelona

This team was awesome last season, and their best player (Lamine Yamal) is 18 years old. Perhaps there's some regression in the cards for 37-year-old Robert Lewandowski and for Raphinha after a career year, but that could be offset by the equally likely outcomes of Pedri, Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsí and Alejandro Balde all getting better.

Also, I just think it's a good thing that Barcelona are succeeding. Not because the sport is better when Barcelona are good or whatever nonsense Joan Laporta might tell you, but rather: Hansi Flick's team embraces maximum risk and it's way more fun to watch than the conservative, controlled approach that has taken over the top of the Premier League.

One early warning sign, though: Lamine Yamal is taking some really bad shots. As I wrote about last season, Yamal wasn't going to become the actual best player in the world until he found a way to take a higher volume of high-quality shots. He has certainly upped the volume, but, uh...

That's 19 shots in three games for 0.82 xG. The Europe-wide average on a given shot is about 0.12 xG; Yamal is down at ... 0.04.

1. Paris Saint-Germain

The betting markets have PSG bunched up with the previous four teams in terms of title odds, but they should be the stand-alone favorite. They were the best team in the world by the end of last season, and they were the fifth-youngest team in the competition. Most of their best players are only going to get better.

They're an elite attacking team. They're an elite defensive team. And they're an elite pressing team. "Can Ousmane Dembélé stay healthy again?" is their major question mark, but the surrounding talent is so good that they could easily fade a Dembele injury as long as he's back by the knockout round.

Until it's proven otherwise, this is the best -- and most balanced -- team in the world.