From Man City to Club Brugge, why each Champions League team will, or won’t, win it all

The break between the Champions League group stage and knockout rounds always feels a bit strange. The competition drives and dictates the European soccer season to the point where we follow the top-four races in the top leagues as closely as we do the title races — or more so, due to the competitiveness of such races — but we typically take an approximately two-month break from the competition in the winter months. This year, said break was 3½ months.

A lot’s gone on in the soccer world since Nov. 2, when RB Leipzig and AC Milan stomped Shakhtar Donetsk and Salzburg, respectively, to claim the final spots in the round of 16. Barcelona established full control of LaLiga’s title race … after getting eliminated from the Champions League. Arsenal maintained its edge on the field in the Premier League. Bayern Munich pulled away from the Bundesliga field, only to get reeled back in a bit. Chelsea and Liverpool went from wobbly to worse. Manchester United released its most famous player and immediately surged. Oh yeah, and the entire club soccer world paused for weeks while Lionel Messi and Argentina won the World Cup.

But now the competition’s back, and damn if the pecking order doesn’t seem a little blurry. From both betting and odds perspectives, Manchester City and Bayern are the clear favorites, but the former has won just three of its last six matches in all competitions, the latter one of four. PSG has lost Kylian Mbappe to injury in the short term and has shown spotty road form since returning to action.

Real Madrid is banged up. Liverpool and Chelsea are playing like mid-table Premier League teams, which they are. Benfica, good enough to top PSG in Group H last fall, lost its most exciting young player (midfielder Enzo Fernandez) to a big-money transfer in late January.

It’s all a bit of a mess. Of the top seven or eight favorites heading into the round of 16, only one, Napoli, is playing all that well. Will that lead to some shocking results over the next couple of weeks? Will the sport’s sleepwalking big names use the Champions League as a shot in the arm and find fifth gear again? We’re about to find out.