Ranking the UEFA Champions League field: Who stops Man City? - ESPN

You just want to read the rankings. I just want you to read the rankings, so let's dispense with the niceties. The UEFA Champions League group stages start this week, for the last time in this format before UEFA introduces the new «Swiss model» and expands the field to 36 teams.

So, I ranked and tiered all 32 teams based on how likely they are to win the Champions League. Unless otherwise noted, all stats come courtesy of Stats Perform.

Let's get to it.

Despite not necessarily landing in the hardest possible group, the defending Danish champs still have the longest title odds — by far. The implied probability behind their likelihood of winning the Champions league gives them about a 0.1% chance of winning the whole thing. And that's without removing the vig (the fee books essentially charge to place a bet), so I think we can comfortably say that Copenhagen's odds of taking home the European Cup are actually less than that.

Although they scored only one goal and conceded 12 in the group stages last season, they somehow managed to draw all of their home matches last season — against Sevilla, Manchester City and Borussia Dortmund. A banana peel, perhaps, but not likely to be much more.

Mark Ogden breaks down every Champions League group after a draw that brings Bayern's Harry Kane back to England to face Manchester United.

Maybe these teams all belong in the previous tier, too. There's not necessarily a great argument that any of them are better, in terms of winning soccer games, than FC Copenhagen.

Red Star (or Crvena Zvezda) are basically the Bayern Munich of Serbia. They've won six league titles in a row. Last season, they won 30 games and drew seven — yes, the league had an odd number of games — while scoring 96 goals