The wait is over and the best football in the world is back. The Champions League resumes this Tuesday and Manchester City arrives with the aim of defending the title but with a great chance of repeating as kings of Europe, which according to the numbers doesn’t seem so far away.
According to an Opta analyst forecast, Manchester City is the team with the highest probability of being crowned in the 2023-2024 Champions League at 38.9 percent, well behind the club with the most winners in this tournament, Real Madrid, who is ranked fourth on this list with just a 6 percent chance of winning his fifteenth Orejona.
And the power he showed last season, in which he not only won his first European Cup without losing a single game, but also won the FA Cup and the Premier League, appears to be intact as it marches to start the English league at perfect pace. five wins and an average of almost three goals per game.
However, winning the Premier League in a row is not the same as winning the Champions League, as in the 69 editions of this tournament only eight clubs, including two English ones, have managed to win two or more championships in a row. Liverpool achieved it in seasons 76-77 and 77-78 and Nottingham Forest in seasons 78-79 and 79-80.
The other clubs that made it are: Real Madrid (55-56, 56-57, 57-58, 58-59 and 59-60 and 15-16, 16-17 and 17-18), Benfica (60 – 61 and 61-62), Inter Milan (63-64 and 64-65), Ajax (70-71, 71-72 and 72-73), Bayern Munich (73-74, 74-75 and 75-76) , and Milan (88-89 and 89-90).
In fact, since this competition was renamed the Champions League in 1992, only the Merengue team has managed to repeat this in successive seasons. In these 21 years, 14 different teams have been crowned, four of them from English football: Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City.
44 years have passed since Nottingham Forest were crowned double European champions and this campaign seems ideal for an English club to repeat that feat, as it is a peculiarity and coincidence that Forest achieved this by being like the club listed Pep Guardiola was a debutant and undefeated champion last season.
Three Mexicans at the most important club tournament in Europe
With the summer market now over and with the recent changes, three footballers will represent Mexico in the 2023-2024 Champions League season: Santiago Giménez with Feyenoord, Chucky Lozano with PSV Eindhoven and Jorge Sánchez with FC Porto.
Chucky and the Farmers face Sevilla, Arsenal and RC Lens in Group B. Santi and the Rotterdam team to Atlético de Madrid, Lazio and Celtic; while Sánchez will do so against Barcelona, Shakhtar Donetsk and Real Antwerp.
