Las football seasons They start every year earlier. You discover yourself with your feet soaking on the shore of some beach, catching the rays of a summer sunset, when a referee is already blowing the whistle for the start of, say, a Rayo-Alavés. And so it happens that until these dates are reached, once the anticlimactic September national team break, there is no real feeling that the season has really started. But it ends this Tuesday. Because the Champions League begins.
It is these Tuesdays and Wednesdays of continental football that really give football the feeling of returning to routine, while through the windows you begin to feel some storms, a few degrees less, the trees already beginning to peel without remedy. The tickling thinking about your team’s victory, the saliva flowing from the rival’s defeat, the curiosity about what that English or Italian team of which you barely know a handful of proper names is doing.
Manchester City’s arguments
The Champions League seduces because it activates all those instincts and because each new edition leads the mind to link the imminent restart with the memories of the previous one. In this case, with a Manchester City overwhelming, champion of the entire last year, the plenitude so long sought by Pep Guardiola, who finally achieved excellence thanks to the addition of that Erling Haaland that he can do anything and that he will end the year by lifting the Ballon d’Or.
City, which opens on Tuesday by hosting Red Star, starts this Champions League as the undisputed favorite to repeat its success. This summer he lost Gündogan y Mahrezbut adds to Guardiol, Kovacic, Nunes y Tissue to try to turn his reign into an empire. And, above all, there are still the Haaland, Bernard Silva, Grealish, Rodrigo and the now injured De Bruyne to sustain his candidacy at the top of the continental ranks.
The five Spanish teams
The Spanish teams, five this year, celebrate the luck of not having to worry about City at least until the knockout phase. Especially a Real Madrid what shipwrecked in the last semi-finals before Guardiola and his team. The white team (which starts hosting Union Berlin on Wednesday), due to tradition, history and performance (leader of LaLiga with full victories) are also positioned as one of the favorites, with the doubt of whether the shortage of forwards will end up taking its toll, but with the security that the newcomer gives off Jude Bellingham.
He Barçafor his part, appears in this Champions League under pressure from his recent past. It has been falling in the group stage for two years and that is intolerable for a club like Barça. Overcoming that barrier this season is an inexcusable obligation for a Xavi who has the reinforcements of Gündogan, Joao Félix and Cancelo to seek success. Antwerp, this Tuesday in Montjuic, is the first obstacle.
Atlético also feels obliged to reach the round of 16 after being last in its group last year. Simeone’s squad leaves many doubts, more after Carrasco’s departure with the market closed and the serious injury suffered by Lemar this weekend. But there can be no excuses with a group with Feyenoord, Celtic and Lazio, their first rival, this Tuesday in Rome.
For Sevilla (classified as Europa League champion) y Real society There is less pressure, although both should be in the round of 16 of the competition. Both debut on Wednesday: the Andalusians hosting Lens and the Basques against Inter Milan, current runners-up.
Arsenal, Bayern, PSG…
Outside our borders, three teams deserve a special mention. In the absence of Liverpool and Chelsea, Arsenal appears as the other most solvent English candidate. He experienced brutal growth last year with Mikel Arteta and now he aspires to also consolidate it in the Champions League. The always turbulent Manchester United gives less than half a priori.
Bayern, of course, are another of the favorites. It has lost the institutional stability that the German giant always boasted of, but the incorporation of a gunner like Harry Kane reinforces his candidacy for the title. This Wednesday he stars, against Manchester United, in the most attractive duel of the first day.
Completing the list of favorites (with permission from Naples or Inter) is PSG. The team now coached by Luis Enrique seems to live in an eternal transition, without Messi and Neymar, but with a Mbappé is once again in that phase of the season in which he seems to want to be the generational leader of the Parisian team: Tomorrow, God will say. His lukewarm start to the season (eight points in five games) It does not invite optimism, but it is expected that the French will improve as the autumn progresses.
2023-09-19 06:39:41
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