Chelsea, PSG, Man Utd: Data analysts rank Champions League clubs by chances of winning

The Champions League is back.

With many of the title races in Europe’s biggest leagues all but concluded already, the return of the continent’s premier competition promises to be breathe new life into the conclusion of the 2021/22 season.

Don’t get it twisted, league football can provide some truly unforgettable moments of drama, but there are very few things that come close to the thrill-a-minute chaos of the Champions League.

Besides, when the knockout rounds appear on the horizon as they finally have this week, you just know that Europe’s biggest clubs swinging it out on the world stage will bring you to the edge of your seat.

And one of the biggest reasons behind the Champions League being such an entertaining watch is that predicting which team is going to lift ‘Big Ears’ come May almost always feel impossible.

After all, you might well have been laughed out of your own house for suggesting that Chelsea would become European champions last season when the wheels were starting to fall off under Frank Lampard.

Seldom do the favourites ever canter to Champions League glory and even when they do manage to pull it off, you can rest assured that they won’t have achieved it without hardship along the way.

So, with the round of 16 on the cusp of its return and the Champions League proving harder to predict than ever, we’ve turned our attention to the data in a bid to predict who might conquer the continent.

To do that, we’ve headed over to the data analysts at FiveThirtyEight who used a complex algorithm, which you can learn more about here, to project who is most likely to win some of sport’s biggest competitions.

And ahead of the Champions League’s triumphant return, their statistical modelling has ranked all 16 of the