The last games of the eighth finals in a few days. There are still a few games where the tension is full. One of those games is probably not Manchester City's game at home against RB Leipzig. Porto - Inter is a game where there is still a lot at stake, and Inter has built in only a marginal margin at the moment. Porto must certainly be considered to be able to put things in order in Portugal with this team. I expect a narrow victory for Porto, but it could also end in a goalless draw. Both are not candidates for the overall victory, but I think Inter is a dangerous outsider.

Little happens, but for now Napoli is leading 1-0 in the home game against Atalanta, which is one of the few teams that could beat Napoli. You might think that Napoli are not so motivated anymore due to the force majeure and the large number of points ahead of Inter, but they want to finish the season in style, which they probably will. Atalanta are currently in 6th place, a place that is of no use to them, as they are not interested in participating in the conference league. A lot can still happen in the last 12 games. But Inter suffered a potentially costly defeat and could easily drop to fourth place.

Easy victory today for Real Madrid in the end, but the start was not optimal today. Real Madrid has too often that it falls behind, it usually works out just like today because of the 3-1 victory, but it is something that has put them behind Barcelona. The title will not be in jeopardy again, but we will soon have another 6 points game if it is Barcelona - Real Madrid that will be played at Camp Nou. And Real Madrid must hope that Barcelona also loses points in other matches.

And another disappointment for Liverpool with a 1-0 defeat. And not even against a top team. It is not too bad in terms of position in the ranking, but that is mainly because other teams in the middle/sub-top drop many points. Chelsea once again won away at Leicester City. They have bought so many players that players of 100 million just ended up on the bank. As a player, do you really want to be part of a team in that way? Manchester City is still 0-0 at half-time and therefore seems to be struggling with the win, but we know from this team that they often really get going in the 2nd half.

I like that attention is being paid to the competition in Argentina. Occasionally there is still quite a high level in the teams, but this competition is relatively unknown to the general public. Almost all of Argentina's major players all started playing football in this competition and were then removed by scouts from European top clubs. I don't know which teams are currently at the top in Argentina, but there will always be good players who leave for Europe sooner or later. With which club Messi was growed up?

Somewhere we could expect Union Berlin to fall back, they have never been able to compete for the title, even though they once had a 4-point gap with Bayern Munich in their favor. But before the start of the season they would of course still be very happy with the current ranking, but in Europe they are also still active and they have a good chance to go through to the next round. I don't know where they will finish this competition, they have a nice team but individually they have few players who can decide a game. Players who have Bayern Munich and Dortmund, for example.

Lille - Lyon has now become a goal-rich duel. We currently have the 3-3 score, but most likely also the final score as we are deep in injury time. Of course, Marseille has the best papers to finish 2nd, but there are still quite a few games to play this season. Lyon has a disappointing season with a current 8th place and the difference with the number 2 Marseilla, for example, is already 15 points. It will be a difficult story for this team to qualify for the CL. The Europa League would be a miracle if they manage to achieve that, but I don't know about the Coefficients list, I think France is pretty good on that list. I don't know why that is, because PSG actually performs reasonably well every year and not even very well.

Actually, Barcelona has not convinced much at all this season. They are in the lead, but that is mainly because Real Madrid has missed a lot of points. Look at the results of Barcelona, that is really a lot of meager victory. Often 1-0 results, few goals against but also very few scored. They can, however, fully focus on the competition, since they are no longer active in Europe due to the elimination at United. I don't know if that is an advantage. Somehow Real Madrid always do much better in European tournaments, but in the competition they are not much different. Last season, Barcelona didn't even come close to Real Madrid, now it seems to be the complete opposite.

There are few goals in this tournament tonight. I don't think many teams will dare to take much risk. The biggest surprise so far came in the match that was already played on Tuesday, when AZ won 1-2 against Lazio Roma in Rome. Fiorentina is having a hard time at home against Sivasspor and it is still 0-0 there. That could very well be the final score in this match. Who would be the absolute top favorite to win the tournament? That was Lazio, but they have a serious problem with the defeat.

I can say that Arsenal's draw is a disappointing result. They are still huge favorites to progress to the next round, but it means they have to win at home against the Portuguese team. Meanwhile, Man United is on a safe 3-1 lead, but if this stays that way, it is certainly not over for Real Betis, who can then try to win by 2 goals at home. If United could score another goal, it would make a world of difference and United can travel to Spain with a sense of relief. Juventus has a thin 1-0 on the scoreboard, but at least they are ahead.

Bayern started moderately at the beginning of the 2nd half of the season, but now seems to have repaired the damage nicely. Dortmund is in a good phase at the moment and is really participating in the championship. It should come as no surprise that Union Berlin has fallen back a bit, there was a long period in which everything went well for this team, but now some dents are starting to come into play here and there, resulting in some disappointing results. RB Leipzig may also be quite close to the championship, but it still feels like they are very far away. The title battle is between Munich and Dortmund, basically the 2 superpowers of German football for decades. It could be that Bayern also had some bad luck in the beginning of 2023, what they showed in the last games looked very convincing at times.

What total dominance from Verstappen this weekend. Very impressive how much impression he has made again, but are we waiting for that as a Formula 1 fan? everyone likes it much more if other drivers also start winning races and that the differences become smaller at the top of the standings. It is very early to draw conclusions, but if RedBull does not experience any technical problems, I think that the world title will become a prey for Verstappen. In any case, Mercedes was already a lot better in this race than in the whole of last season. I think Hamilton can still win a race here and there.

Both games in the CL are currently still 0-0, which will most likely be the halftime score for both games. I also see that the game at Tottenham Hotspurs started 10 minutes later, but no goals seen yet. PSG had a great chance just before the break due to a big mistake by the Bayern goalkeeper, but de Ligt saved on the line and prevented PSG from taking the lead in this game. Bayern can rely on a 0-1 win in Paris a few weeks ago. But PSG can still easily win this game and I don't rule out that that will happen.

Alonso also drove a great race. Verstappen was allowed to start from Pole Position, but was gone like a devil and after the first corner it was already impossible to keep up. Perhaps a bit premature to draw conclusions, but the new car from RedBull seems to be fine again and the engine has also performed excellently. The rest of the field won't have any chances in these circumstances if Max keeps driving like this, but we still have a lot of races ahead of us so we'll have to wait and see. I don't know what Perez's role will be, he will again function as a kind of wingman for Max to thwart the rest as much as possible so that they cannot get close to Max in the fight for the world championship.

I can't imagine Arsenal having many problems with Sporting. But United has a very poor preparation due to the loss in the competition against Liverpool, you would normally say that will also be in the heads of the players. The two teams with Union are paired together in this round, a funny draw. Donetsk also continues to have a hard time because they have to play their home games in Poland, which is also at the expense of the quality of their team. Roma - Soeciedad looks to be a game that could go either way. Roma has a bigger name but Sociedad is doing very well in the Spanish league.

According to media reports, Ronaldo is still having a great time at his club in Saudi Arabia. Of course he can hardly tell if he is not having a good time, but he looks cheerful. I don't know if his family is having a good time, but he will be rich in any case. 200 million a year, that's more than half a million a day. People have to work long hours for that. And Ronaldo may also have been brought in to convince the world to host the World Cup in Saudi Arabia in a few years. But that's another discussion. They try to get more strong players there, money is not an issue. Culture is very different from Europe.

Meanwhile, AS Roma has taken a 1-0 lead against Juventus, which will therefore fall even further behind in the battle for European football. It was already a lost season, but the team from Turin cannot really afford these kinds of defeats. And AS Roma is fully participating at the top for the placement of the CL, so they will certainly celebrate this. It is a match between 2 superpowers in Italian football. It is also unclear what will happen to management since the fraud came to light at Juventus. I don't know to what extent that will affect the people on the board.

Another liberating victory for Bayer Leverkusen, which has not really had a good season so far. Wolfsburg - Eintracht Frankfurt ended in a 2-2 draw, but it was still an entertaining game without a winner. Bayern Munich still has to deal with Dormtund, which has completely repaired the backlog before the winter, but that is mainly because Bayern Munich dropped many points after the winter with draws and unnecessary defeats. But still anything van happen, I am sure that many people would like to see a new champion in Germany except Bayern Munich.

It seems that Real Madrid will run into another loss of points today. No goals yet after an hour of football, that does not look very hopeful for the Madrilenians. Could they have already put the title out of their heads like this? By the way, Real Betis is also just neatly in 5th place, so they also have every chance to enforce qualification for the CL in this way with this standings. The mutual duel in the competition between Barcelona and Real Madrid will also be played soon. If Barcelona wins, the book can be closed for Real Madrid.

Barcelona quickly took a 1-0 lead in the first half, and it remained that way until the end of the game. There could have been more for Valencia, but Barcelona is the team of small victories this season. And was also necessary after the bad week last week in the competition and in the El both. But this week they also won the cup at Real Madrid, so this week was another very successful week for Barcelona. And every week Xavi's men are getting closer to the title in Spain they crave. An unnecessary red card from Aurajo of Barcelona.