Liverpool, Barca, Real Madrid: Every Champions League club ranked by chances of winning

The 2022/23 Champions League has finally taken shape and we can’t wait to get started.

With the conclusion of the final qualifying rounds on Tuesday and Wednesday, UEFA truly got the party started by executing the group stage draw at the home of this season’s final: Istanbul.

As with every Champions League draw, fans across the world were on the edge of their seats to find out who would land the perfect set of adversaries and who would be dumped in the ‘Group of Death’.

For the most part, the Premier League sides have come out relatively unscathed with Manchester City once again bagging a favourable draw, while Liverpool arguably have the trickiest line-up of the four.

But nobody’s got it rougher than poor old Viktoria Plzen who have their backs up against the wall in Group C along with Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Inter Milan. Yikes.

Elsewhere, Group B is perhaps the weakest quartet of the bunch with Atletico Madrid leading the charge and their city neighbours, Real, have a relatively straightforward start to their title defence.

However, the Champions League is about more than just the group stage, which can often turn into something of a procession, so let’s also look at the draw from the perspective of what it means for the rest of the tournament.

And while we no doubt each have our own inklings as to who will go all the way this season, often the best way of looking at things coldly, impartially and objectively is by turning to the statistics.

That’s where FiveThirtyEight come in, because they’re arguably the best in the business when it comes to predicting top-level sport by way of projecting teams’ chances of achieving certain goals.

Using a complex algorithm – which you can learn more about here – to weight each