UEFA Champions League 2025/26 Season

[Slow death]

I was thinking Manchester united has signed Michael Carrick only for my friend to tell me yesterday that Manchester united has not really signed Michael Carrick as a Coach but rather an acting Coach and I think it's because Michael Carrick has not coached before but he has been an acting Coach for sometime now and I can't really say if he is perfect for Manchester united because we can not tell about tomorrow but with the little I have seen him do in Manchester united is enough to take over.

Michael Carrick has some coaching experience; he was assistant coach to Jose Mourinho at Manchester United from the 2018/19 to the 2021/22 season.

Afterwards, he became manager of Middlesbrough (becoming head coach in the 2022-2025 season). This happened after he had been interim manager of Manchester United for a month in the 2021/22 season when Ole Gunnar Solskjær was sacked.  

Currently, from what I see, the Manchester United management will wait for the season to end to see how he performs before making a decision on whether or not to sign him permanently.

[Stablexcoin]

For me, at this moment it's difficult to predict how Real Madrid's game will turn out, because in my opinion they're playing badly, but even so, at least they're winning the league, and that's strange. It's something that doesn't convince, but they get results You don't see that greatness, that explosiveness that Real Madrid has instead , you see them playing poorly I just want Real Madrid to play better and win.

The game determines a lot for Real Madrid, they can't afford to lose against Benfica, there is less worry about the match. What will be the round of 16 without Real Madrid among those who made it there? Real Madrid are going to play in any of the finals, either ending their way at the quarter or semi final, i don't think they are capable of winning the Champions League, not with this performance.

[hyudien]

Mbappe will surely break Ronaldo's record of 17 champions league goals in a single season because his goal scoring techniques this season is second to none. Is it about the braces he has scored against Marseille, Monaco and Benfica, the hattrick against Kairat Almaty, and the 4 goals he scored against Olympiakos. He is just a genius that is playing at one of the best teams in Europe so he can even reach 18 goals in their next 2 Champions League games if he can score a brace in one of the matches and a hattrick in another match.

Now it is not difficult to break Ronaldo record as the top scorer in the UCL competition for each season, maybe even at the beginning of the UCL phase it can be broken, that's because the UCL format is now different from before, now there are more matches that allow Mbappe or anyone to score as many goals as possible, it is not even difficult to score more than 20 goals if a team's performance is at its best.

[pewboy]

Manchester City is at the time trying to pose a threat to Arsenal, although they are not there yet, they are getting close with the points gap and so in as much as I also see Arsenal as the top title contender, they do not have that luxury of points gap actually  so they need to be at the top of their game to maintain the distance.

Manchester City is definitely the team that can cause the most trouble to Arsenal at the moment, but i don't think they are as consistent as them. Clearly, these are important things to evaluate because they will also bring the title from this, and they have to be careful of every move Manchester City makes.

[Dump3er]

Manchester City is at the time trying to pose a threat to Arsenal, although they are not there yet, they are getting close with the points gap and so in as much as I also see Arsenal as the top title contender, they do not have that luxury of points gap actually  so they need to be at the top of their game to maintain the distance.

Manchester City is definitely the team that can cause the most trouble to Arsenal at the moment, but i don't think they are as consistent as them. Clearly, these are important things to evaluate because they will also bring the title from this, and they have to be careful of every move Manchester City makes.

Since this is the discussion about the UCL, I don't think you are right because there is Bayern from the Bundesliga and Barcelona from La Liga and both teams are not weaker than Manchester City at the moment. In the Premier League it could be true, but there Arsenal is losing against other teams as well. You don't win the title by winning against Manchester City alone. If you want to lift this trophy, you have to eliminate several top teams. You may get lucky once or twice because you meet some of the weaker teams on the path to the final, but on average there is no way around beating the best of the best teams.

[Jegileman]

The game determines a lot for Real Madrid, they can't afford to lose against Benfica, there is less worry about the match. What will be the round of 16 without Real Madrid among those who made it there? Real Madrid are going to play in any of the finals, either ending their way at the quarter or semi final, i don't think they are capable of winning the Champions League, not with this performance.

The champions league continues to be as interesting even without Real Madrid but when they’re around, the game still doesn’t lose its interesting taste. The champions league continues to be as exciting as never before because it comprises of the best teams in the competition. Real Madrid against Benfica will be an entertaining match because of how important that match will be to them. Even if they’ll be eliminated from the champions league, they won’t want that to happen at this time in the competition.

Now it is not difficult to break Ronaldo record as the top scorer in the UCL competition for each season, maybe even at the beginning of the UCL phase it can be broken, that's because the UCL format is now different from before, now there are more matches that allow Mbappe or anyone to score as many goals as possible, it is not even difficult to score more than 20 goals if a team's performance is at its best.

I remember when this new format was introduced, some people complained about much number of games to be played each season by most of the teams, but look at how far we’ve come, the game only gets even more interesting with no team complaining about fatigue or anything. The UCL now has more matches and any team that gets to dominate it more and has good goal scorer, beating Ronaldo record will be much easier.

[LGD2Business]

Since this is the discussion about the UCL, I don't think you are right because there is Bayern from the Bundesliga and Barcelona from La Liga and both teams are not weaker than Manchester City at the moment. In the Premier League it could be true, but there Arsenal is losing against other teams as well. You don't win the title by winning against Manchester City alone. If you want to lift this trophy, you have to eliminate several top teams. You may get lucky once or twice because you meet some of the weaker teams on the path to the final, but on average there is no way around beating the best of the best teams.

Winning the Champions League isn't as easy as it looks. This is the pinnacle of football. In La Liga, only 2 teams compete. In the Premier League, 3 teams compete for the title. In the Bundesliga and Ligue 1, there's hardly any competition. But when it comes to the Champions League, 5 or 6 teams stand out. Manchester City is one of them, just like Arsenal. Bayern, PSG, Real Madrid and Barcelona are the other top contenders. I don't think there's a huge difference between these 6 teams. When it comes to winning the biggest trophy, these teams are ahead of the rest, but small differences between them will determine the outcome.

[Asiska02]

Winning the Champions League isn't as easy as it looks. This is the pinnacle of football. In La Liga, only 2 teams compete. In the Premier League, 3 teams compete for the title. In the Bundesliga and Ligue 1, there's hardly any competition. But when it comes to the Champions League, 5 or 6 teams stand out. Manchester City is one of them, just like Arsenal. Bayern, PSG, Real Madrid and Barcelona are the other top contenders. I don't think there's a huge difference between these 6 teams. When it comes to winning the biggest trophy, these teams are ahead of the rest, but small differences between them will determine the outcome.

The champions league is organised in such a way that a best team in the domestic league does not automatically means a smooth ticket to win the champions league. All teams involved in the champions league have the same chances of winning the champions league trophy and their differences in performance and dominance makes is clear more who stands to win the trophy at the end of the season.

All the teams you’ve mentioned have been playing quite well in the champions league so far, seeing all of them in the quarterfinals won’t be shocking but a matchup between any of them before the quarterfinals will not make all of them get to play in the quarterfinals. Watching and observing the games more closely than before, we shall get to see the team that laughs lasts and win the trophy.

[FBCTorg]

In this season, many big teams are having their performance on lowest level. Serie A teams failed to make their mark in top 8, this is a big problem for them, now three teams are in playoffs, most chances they could be making appearance in knock out stage.

Dutch League teams facing the worst situation as all, failed to have their spots in top 24. Galatasaray and Benfica done good job still they have backlash in last few matches. Qarabağ is small team but big blast and I am surprised with Marseille as well because in last 2 games they conceded 6 goals and not able to score any goal which was big setback for them, and they failed to make their spot into 24.

[Tamaperdana]

In this season, 5 out of 8 clubs are from Premier league which is clearly showing how competitive they are and their consistency and performance is always on good level, three teams Barcelona, Sporting CP and Bayern Munich filling remaining spots with no Serie A club able to have top 8 that is really miserable.

PSG also missing spot from top 8 due to worst run in last 3 matches, teams like Real Madrid and Inter Milan also faced problems and not able to compete into top ranks, now qualifications are going to be interesting where few teams have enough advantage still any prediction about winner in these qualifications are not easy because 2026 is having many surprises, that leads things to be challenging.

Yes,, I'm also surprised that the top eight positions in the Champions League are currently filled by teams from the English Premier League, and that's truly quite extraordinary. In their respective domestic leagues, some English Premier League teams are also experiencing a slump in performance,, such as Tottenham and Liverpool. But what's remarkable is that in the Champions League, their performance is quite good and they are able to occupy quite high positions in this competition.

So,, this really reflects that the English Premier League teams do indeed have quite good strength compared to other teams. Furthermore,, speaking of the teams from Serie A, it's true that they are all currently in poor form when we talk about the Champions League. Because all the teams representing Serie A are currently outside the top eight and must participate in the play-offs to advance to the next round. But I'm not surprised,, because in the past few seasons, the performance of Serie A teams has been less than stellar.

[el kaka22]

Numbers will change for sure, because now we have 8 games instead of 6 games like we used to. Which means that teams are now playing a lot more games. Back in the day we would have just last sixteen as well, now we have playoffs, which could be two more games. All of which combined to make sure that teams end up playing more games to make more money.

Financially that was a good decision, because teams are making more money from UCL than ever before, but when it comes to players getting injured, it's creating a risk and tires them out. This however also means that in the future all the records will be broken because players will have more games to score, and will play against multiple weak teams and score a bunch of goals.

[CageMabok]

...

Manchester City is definitely the team that can cause the most trouble to Arsenal at the moment, but i don't think they are as consistent as them. Clearly, these are important things to evaluate because they will also bring the title from this, and they have to be careful of every move Manchester City makes.

What we need to look at this season for Arsenal is their focus on major competitions like the Premier League and the Champions League. If Arsenal were to focus more on the Champions League, they would certainly have a bit of a hard time monitoring Manchester City's moves. However, I also believe Arsenal has the ability to maintain their position at the top of the Premier League table as long as Manchester City isn't consistently winning every game they have left this season.

[Qastessa]

17 February is slowly approaching and we can finally talk about the Champions League again.
I can't wait for it to start again! Because I'm curious to find out which eight teams will face the top eight in the standings.
In my opinion, the top eight will be
Inter
PSG
Real Madrid
Juventus
Borussia Dortmund
Atletico Madrid
Leverkusen
Newcastle

What do you think?

These games are going to be good to watch here I have to be agreed with you about few but still few matches are going to be challenging because in this season many teams are having their performance at lowest level which are encouraging small clubs to take advantage.

Juventus, Inter Milan, PSG, Atlético Madrid are going to be having higher chance of going into next round, but few matches are going to be balanced Real Madrid/Benfica, Borussia Dortmund/Atlanta, Olympiacos Piraeus/Bayer Leverkusen is also having some good action while I am giving Newcastle United good advantage, but Qarabağ have good season which is also impressive and interesting for their chance to go into next round.

[alankasman]

What we need to look at this season for Arsenal is their focus on major competitions like the Premier League and the Champions League. If Arsenal were to focus more on the Champions League, they would certainly have a bit of a hard time monitoring Manchester City's moves. However, I also believe Arsenal has the ability to maintain their position at the top of the Premier League table as long as Manchester City isn't consistently winning every game they have left this season.

This is what makes Arsenal a little hesitant. However despite their busy schedule they certainly want to impress in both competitions. It's true as you said that if they only focus on the UCL they won't be able to see what will happen in the EPL which they are also targeting as the title. Therefore I dare say Arsenal will be very confused this season.

However, Arteta has prepared everything to maintain their consistency in both competitions so even though many people doubt them I think they will maximize their efforts in the EPL competition because for several seasons they have always failed to maintain their concentration to become champions at the end of the competition.

[Tonimez]

What we need to look at this season for Arsenal is their focus on major competitions like the Premier League and the Champions League. If Arsenal were to focus more on the Champions League, they would certainly have a bit of a hard time monitoring Manchester City's moves. However, I also believe Arsenal has the ability to maintain their position at the top of the Premier League table as long as Manchester City isn't consistently winning every game they have left this season.

This is what makes Arsenal a little hesitant. However despite their busy schedule they certainly want to impress in both competitions. It's true as you said that if they only focus on the UCL they won't be able to see what will happen in the EPL which they are also targeting as the title. Therefore I dare say Arsenal will be very confused this season.

However, Arteta has prepared everything to maintain their consistency in both competitions so even though many people doubt them I think they will maximize their efforts in the EPL competition because for several seasons they have always failed to maintain their concentration to become champions at the end of the competition.

It is going to be a difficult ride for Arsenal this season and they could end up with no title again this season. Manchester city is their real enemy of progress as they have collected several league titles from Arsenal and still aiming to do it again this season. The best thing arsenal can do is to focus on champions League right now. It is still possible that they will finally lift the league too but if they get more intentional about winning the champions league, they will unknowingly push the same strength on the local league.

Arsenal is the only team that has not lost a single point in this  champions League campaign with 24 points intact. However if they should eventually meet with teams like Bayern Munich again, th y may not be lucky this time. Arsenal is in a good form but loosing to Manchester United in a very confused and destabilised manner is an indication that they can drop out of the champions league too even after showing off good football so far. Bayern Munich stands good chance to win this season champions League.

[Xcode7]

What we need to look at this season for Arsenal is their focus on major competitions like the Premier League and the Champions League. If Arsenal were to focus more on the Champions League, they would certainly have a bit of a hard time monitoring Manchester City's moves. However, I also believe Arsenal has the ability to maintain their position at the top of the Premier League table as long as Manchester City isn't consistently winning every game they have left this season.

This is what makes Arsenal a little hesitant. However despite their busy schedule they certainly want to impress in both competitions. It's true as you said that if they only focus on the UCL they won't be able to see what will happen in the EPL which they are also targeting as the title. Therefore I dare say Arsenal will be very confused this season.

However, Arteta has prepared everything to maintain their consistency in both competitions so even though many people doubt them I think they will maximize their efforts in the EPL competition because for several seasons they have always failed to maintain their concentration to become champions at the end of the competition.

Every team definitely wants a title, especially a team as big as Arsenal and of course they will be very focused and ready for the tight match schedule, but indeed the issue of performance consistency has continued to be a problem for Arsenal in the last few seasons and we don't know if this season can be resolved by Arteta, but what is certain is that Arsenal this season is stronger than the previous season so they cannot be underestimated, but they cannot be too favored either.

[Wakate]

Every team definitely wants a title, especially a team as big as Arsenal and of course they will be very focused and ready for the tight match schedule, but indeed the issue of performance consistency has continued to be a problem for Arsenal in the last few seasons and we don't know if this season can be resolved by Arteta, but what is certain is that Arsenal this season is stronger than the previous season so they cannot be underestimated, but they cannot be too favored either.

Maintaining consistency has been a big problem in the football games and it is never easy for a club to be that consistent defeating other clubs. No matter how good a club could be winning other clubs which we have seen in so many instances, they are definitely going to meet other clubs that wouldn't want to get defeated by any means. You can take a look at Manchester United match yesterday.

[giammangiato]

This is what makes Arsenal a little hesitant. However despite their busy schedule they certainly want to impress in both competitions. It's true as you said that if they only focus on the UCL they won't be able to see what will happen in the EPL which they are also targeting as the title. Therefore I dare say Arsenal will be very confused this season.

However, Arteta has prepared everything to maintain their consistency in both competitions so even though many people doubt them I think they will maximize their efforts in the EPL competition because for several seasons they have always failed to maintain their concentration to become champions at the end of the competition.

More than confused I would say that he is busy and under pressure, obviously these are important and difficult competitions, in the case of Premiere he has to hold on to maintain first place, in the case of the Champions if he wants to obtain results for obvious reasons he has to give his all, also because if he had a good season and now that he has reached the point of being able to achieve something Arsenal have no other choices, either he tries or he tries (if he wants to get at least one result in one of the competitions) or he will be left with a handful of flies in his hand, unfortunately for them they don't have many choices.

[changaa]

I don't think they'll give him the job though. He might remain acting coach till the end of the season as I don't think any other manager would be willing to take the job at this posint of the season.

Certainly a competent manager, but also true that to bring Manchester United to the top it also takes time, i don't think you're referring to this season, but not next season?
Unfortunately, they need time to recover everything they haven't done since the start of this football season. They're doing well and must continue playing this way, not compromise and push to recover.

[dollyamo]

Mbappe will surely break Ronaldo's record of 17 champions league goals in a single season because his goal scoring techniques this season is second to none. Is it about the braces he has scored against Marseille, Monaco and Benfica, the hattrick against Kairat Almaty, and the 4 goals he scored against Olympiakos. He is just a genius that is playing at one of the best teams in Europe so he can even reach 18 goals in their next 2 Champions League games if he can score a brace in one of the matches and a hattrick in another match.

Mbappe is so young and he is already a great champion. This boy amazes me more and more. Every game he plays he is always there to score another goal, always in the action and always one step ahead of everyone else. The hunger that this boy has is impressive. It seems so difficult to find another player of his age who is already so complete.