Barcelona and Juventus will hope to land European football next season. Juventus FC/Juventus FC via Getty Images
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Which clubs will snare the final Champions League spots?

April 26, 2022
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Champions League race: Barcelona and Juventus close in, Arsenal looking good.

Of the 19 automatic Champions League slots across the five major European leagues, just eight have already been clinched. Belated congratulations to Manchester City, Liverpool, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, both Milan sides and Real Madrid.

Three of them are still in this year’s semifinals; we’ll see all of them again next season.

With no more than five games left in any of the five leagues, what’s still at stake? For our purposes, we’re also going to consider Chelsea and Napoli clinched since they both have greater than 99% odds to qualify, per FiveThirtyEight. By that same metric, there are currently 16 clubs that have at least a 10% chance of reaching next season’s Champions League either through the domestic table or the Europa League. (Sorry to Real Sociedad, Strasbourg, Union Berlin, and Fiorentina, who all have a less than 10% chance.)

Here’s how they all stack up, in order of the likelihood that they achieve their goal.

All odds come from FiveThirtyEight’s SPI projections.

T-1. Barcelona, LaLiga: 97%

They won’t blow this … right? There’s a six-point gap between Barcelona in second and Real Betis in fifth, and the two sides meet in Seville in two weeks. Of course, both third-place Sevilla and fourth-place Atletico Madrid would also have to outperform Barca over the final five games in order for Xavi Hernandez’s side to fall out of the top four.

Bye-bye, Messi-dependencia. Hello, Pedri-dependencia? With Pedri in the team, Barcelona have won 2.67 points per game at a goal differential of plus-1.93 per match. Over a full season, those would be the best- and second-best marks in Europe, respectively.

The big problem? The 19-year-old midfielder has only started 10 games in LaLiga — and he’s out for the rest of the season.

T-1. Juventus, Serie A: 97%

Ah yes, two of the three remaining members of the European Super League still haven’t clinched Champions League qualification just yet. I wonder if those two things are related? Anyway!

It used to be that Juventus under Max Allegri would grind out a succession of uninspiring results that allowed them to fend off Napoli or AS Roma or Internazionale or Atalanta or whatever other upstart team dared challenge for a league title. Juve would never have dominant underlying performances. Hell, they often wouldn’t even have the best underlying numbers in Italy, but they were better than everyone else at the most decisive moments, when a given match was still in the balance.

Well, now that Allegri is back, that same thing is happening — except for fourth place instead of first. They beat Sassuolo on Monday 2-1, despite a collection of chances that looked like this:

Juve only have the seventh-best expected-goal differential in Serie A this year — behind the three title-chasers, Atalanta, Fiorentina and Roma. In a quiet act of cosmic irony, Jose Mourinho’s Roma have the third-best xG differential in the league, but are eight points back of fourth place.

3. RB Leipzig, Bundesliga and Europa League: 96%

Per FiveThirtyEight, the Energy Drink Boys have a 92% chance of finishing top four in the Bundesliga and a 50% chance of winning the Europa League, where they’re matched with Rangers in the semifinals. Combined, they have a 96% chance of qualifying for the Champions League through either route.

Why all the good probabilistic vibes for a team that’s currently in fourth and just two points ahead of fifth-place Freiburg? Their goal differential (plus-33, second-best in Germany) and their expected-goal differential (plus-22.1, also second-best) both suggest they’re better than their spot in the table suggests.

4. Sevilla, LaLiga: 93%

Among the sides with an 80%-plus probability of qualifying for the Champions League next season, this is the one I could see completely collapsing. I’m not predicting that it’ll happen — 93%, after all — but Julen Lopetegui’s team has been riding hot streaks at both ends of the field all season long. Last season, their xG differential was right in line with their actual goal differential: plus-20.27 and plus-20. This season, their goal differential has improved (plus-22 with five games to go), while their xG differential has completely collapsed, down to plus-4.35. That’s eighth-best in the league, closer to Conference League quality than any other European competition.

5. Marseille, Ligue 1: 92%

Can we take a moment to celebrate Dimitri Payet? It sure seemed like he peaked too late, lighting up the Premier League in his debut season with West Ham United at age 28 before suddenly bouncing right back to Marseille midway through the following season.

Wanna feel old? Payet left West Ham six years ago — and he’s still dominating in Ligue 1.

At 35, he’s second in Ligue 1 in chances created, second in expected assists, and third in passes into the penalty area. Frankly, he might be the most important individual player in Europe. The site FBref tracks a stat called “shot-creating actions”: “The two offensive actions directly leading to a shot, such as passes, dribbles and drawing fouls.”

Payet has registered 182 shot-creating actions this season; no one else in the Big Five leagues has more than 156.

6. Bayer Leverkusen, Bundesliga: 86%

When 18-year-old phenom Florian Wirtz went down with an ACL tear in mid-March, Leverkusen had a one-point lead over Leipzig and Freiburg, who were tied in fourth. Five matches later, they’re still a point ahead of Leipzig and they’re three points ahead of Freiburg. With the fourth-youngest average age (weighted by minutes played) in Europe this season, Gerardo Seoane’s team is in position to solidify its status as a clear top four team in Germany with the added revenue from Champions League qualification. The big one, though, comes on the last matchday of the season, when they’re home to Freiburg.

7. Atletico Madrid, LaLiga: 83%

Atletico Madrid’s per-game xG differential, per FBref:

– 2020-21: plus-0.52
– 2021-22: plus-0.52

Atletico Madrid’s table positions:

– 2020-21: won the league
– 2021-22: fourth, with a five-point lead on fifth and five games remaining

Outside of a bounce-back from Real Madrid and Sevilla’s hot streak, what happened? Well, they’ve scored basically the same number of goals as last year, but they’re allowing nearly twice as many. The biggest reason is the decline in Jan Oblak‘s shot-stopping which has gone from “without peer” to “among the worst in Europe” from one year to the next. He has stabilized since his struggles earlier in the season, but he can’t get back all of those goals that already went in.

Their remaining schedule is rough, too. FiveThirtyEight only gives them a greater than 50% chance of winning any of the remaining matches — home, against Sevilla — and even that one’s only at 51%.

8. Arsenal, Premier League: 66%

At the beginning of the year, I wrote the following: “Unlike the title race, where every dropped point for Liverpool and Chelsea felt like an aberration and an ultimatum against the constant three-point churn of Manchester City, the teams in the race for the final Champions League qualification slot just simply aren’t as good. They drop points all the time!”

Since then, Liverpool have taken 37 points from a possible 39, with the only dropped points coming against City, while Arsenal and Tottenham have tossed fourth place back and forth like a really expensive hot potato:

To me, the most surprising outcome over the final five games would be Arsenal just steadily increasing their odds until finally hitting whatever their magic number ends up being. The Gunners are the favorites for the fourth spot because they have the points in the bank, but it seems likely that the gap shrinks from here even if it eventually grows again.

For the first time under Mikel Arteta, though, the team has made real, sustainable progress that wasn’t based on a striker going nuclear or a goalkeeper standing on his head for a couple months. I’d still rate Spurs as slightly the better team — see: Harry Kane and Heung-min Son — with the better coach. But a fourth-place finish for Arsenal would not be a fluke.

T-9: Monaco and Rennes, Ligue 1: 44%

We’re grouping them together because they’re likely gunning for the same spot and their odds are exactly the same. Here’s how they compare across a number of key metrics:

– Points: Rennes 59 (T-3rd), Monaco 59 (T-3rd)
– Goals: Rennes 75 (2nd), Monaco 55, (T-5th)
– Goals allowed: Rennes 36 (T-5th), Monaco 35 (4th)
– xG differential: Rennes plus-21.84 (3rd), Monaco plus-17.37 (4th)
– Field tilt: Rennes 55.8 percent (5th), Monaco 60.9 percent (6th)
– PPDA: Rennes 11.25 (5th), Monaco 9.78 (1st)

In Rennes, you have a high-powered attacking team that’s content to sit back and not control as much of the field, while Monaco press like mad and keep the ball in the attacking third, but that’s worked more as a defensive strategy rather than an attacking one. The tiebreaker is goal differential, where Rennes have the big edge, but they also have a tougher remaining schedule, closing the season at home against Marseille and then away to last year’s champions, Lille.

11. Tottenham Hotspur, Premier League: 34%

This is a weird stat, especially when you consider that Spurs have arguably the two greatest finishers of the past decade in the Premier League:

And under Antonio Conte, Spurs are weird. They seem to either look like a top three team in the Premier League or a bottom-10 team in the Premier League with no in-between — and it all averages out to roughly the fourth-best team in the league. Here’s a weird quirk that might speak to some of the inconsistency: When Spurs complete more than 87% of their passes outside the attacking third, they’ve won 12 and lost one in the Premier League. When they complete fewer than 80% of those passes, they’ve won six, lost two, and drawn one. But when they complete between 80 to 87% of their passes? They’ve won two, drawn three, and lost … eight.

In other words, when they can control possession in buildup play and don’t fall prey to a press, they flourish. And same goes when they give up against a press and just play super-direct. But if they can’t hit one extreme or the other — maybe, if everything doesn’t go perfectly to the pre-game plan — then it just doesn’t work.

12. West Ham, Europa League: 22%

Avoiding Leipzig in the semis was huge for the Hammers. They get an easier semifinal opponent; Eintracht Frankfurt are rated as roughly equal to Leicester City in FiveThirtyEight’s system. If they advance, there’s a chance — 25%, per FiveThirtyEight — that they get Rangers instead of RBL. And even if they do meet Leipzig in the final, they only have to play them once. The talent of Leipzig would be significantly favored to advance against West Ham over two legs, but in just one game, David Moyes could come up with the right game plan or his players could just easily play the better game or both. A Champions League spot is very much in play.

13. Eintracht Frankfurt, Europa League: 17%

Filip Kostic is the Bundesliga’s Payet — or maybe it’s the other way around, I don’t know.

The Serbian wing-back is responsible for 37% of Frankfurt’s passes into the penalty area and 33% of their expected assists. Among players in the Big Five who have played at least 2,000 minutes, only Sampdoria’s Antonio Candreva is responsible for a bigger share of passes into the box, while no other player accounts for a larger chunk of their team’s expected assists. With that Filipdependencia, Frankfurt are still a negative goal-differential and xG differential team. If West Ham can shut Kostic down, they should be on their way to the final.

14. Real Betis, LaLiga: 15%

Betis feel like your classic Europa League team. They’ve got a guy you remember being a hot transfer target now pulling the strings in Nabil Fekir. They’ve got two former top prospects who are equally shocking in the sense that they’re still playing professional soccer and that they’re already 30 years old in Sergio Canales and Cristian Tello. They’ve got a guy who seemed more Transfer Rumor than Soccer Player at one point in William Carvalho. They’ve got a guy who you vaguely remember from one or two international tournaments in Argentina’s Guido Rodriguez. And they’ve got — wait, how the hell is Joaquin still playing? He turns 41 in less than 100 days!

They still have to play Barcelona and Real Madrid, but the latter will likely have already clinched the league by then and as for the former? Yeah, it’s not going great right now!

T-15. Nice, Ligue 1: 14%

Last season, Christophe Galtier led Lille to a shocking Ligue 1 title with a league-best defense and an attack that was just good-enough to get by. They conceded five fewer goals than PSG but scored 22 fewer — and yet they still won the league. This season, Nice have allowed the fewest goals in Ligue 1 — 29, two fewer than PSG — but they’ve scored 33 fewer than the new champions. They’re currently two points behind Monaco and Rennes. Could the point they lost after fans threw bottles at Payet be the difference between Champions and Europa League football? It just might be.

T-15. Freiburg, Bundesliga: 14%

If you need to root for one team on this list, here you go. Freiburg are this season’s Leicester. They have one of the smallest wage bills in the Bundesliga and they’re not only within reach of the Champions League places, but as the earlier graph shows, they’ve truly been one of the best teams in the league. It’s not luck; they deserve to be here. Plus — and the following sentence will be unfathomable to anyone who mostly watches the Premier League — Christian Streich has been the manager since 2011. He has spoken eloquently about politics and the corporate influences taking over the sport; he just gets it.

Per FiveThirtyEight, his team will be slightly favored in their next two matches — against Hoffenheim and Union Berlin — before the final-day showdown with Leverkusen. If they can make up at least one point before then, it’ll be simple: win, and you’re in.

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