Now is when the rubber meets the road. After a January loaded with (often delightful) cup ties, endless transfer rumors (most of which went nowhere), and lots of cold rain, February raises the stakes pretty significantly in Europe.
The UEFA competitions return — the respective first legs of the Champions League round of 16 come in the middle of the month — and from England (first-place Liverpool at third-place Arsenal) to Germany (second-place Bayern Munich at first-place Bayer Leverkusen) to Spain (first-place Girona at second-place Real Madrid) to Italy (second-place Juventus at first-place Inter), we’ve got a lot of enormous league matches popping up in a short amount of time. And if that’s not enough, the chaotic-as-ever Africa Cup of Nations is reaching the final rounds as well.
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It’s a lot, so let’s walk through five(ish) matches to track in each major country/competition.
UEFA competitions
The Champions League indeed returns, and the round of 24 for both the Europa League and Europa Conference League get underway on Feb. 15 as well. Obviously, you should pay attention to all eight UCL round-of-16 matches, but some might be more interesting than others.
Manchester City is the overall tournament favorite and should handle Copenhagen with relative ease, but two secondary favorites — Real Madrid and Bayern — could find things awkward with road tests. RB Leipzig has been all over the map in 2023-24 and needs to recover from some dismal recent form but boasts plenty of upside; Lazio, meanwhile, has taken 13 points from its last five league matches to rise to within two points of a top-four spot. Bayern hasn’t really seen fifth gear in a while either.
The second set of Champions League matches, on Feb. 20 and 21, features maybe the most fascinating R16 ties — Atletico-Inter and Barca-Napoli – plus, in Porto, another chance for an underdog to make an early home statement. There’s plenty to track here, but you probably didn’t need me to tell you that.
England
This coming Sunday comes one of the biggest remaining matches of the Premier League campaign. The computers and oddsmakers consider the EPL title race a two-teamer between Manchester City and Liverpool — Opta’s power ratings give the former a 59% chance at the title, the latter a 37% chance, and the other 18 teams in the league a combined 5% chance. Arsenal’s odds took a major nosedive with the Gunners’ back-to-back December losses to West Ham and Fulham, but they still only trail Liverpool by five points and have time to either insert themselves back into the race or, with matches against Liverpool and City (Mar. 30) remaining, decide who gets to win.
Meanwhile, third-division Saarbrucken, which has already taken down both Bayern Munich and Eintracht Frankfurt, tries to keep its miraculous run going against a Gladbach team that is worse than both Bayern and Eintracht. Major “magic of the cup” vibes in Germany.
Just four days after hosting Stuttgart, Bayer Leverkusen will play an even bigger match, and it honestly might be the biggest remaining match of the Bundesliga campaign. Bayern comes to town currently trailing the Werkself by just two points, and while the German giants do have to face bogey team Gladbach this coming weekend, it’s fair to say that if Leverkusen wants to remain on the front foot in the title race, they need a result in this one pretty badly.
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That means they’ll have to play better than they have since the league’s restart — they needed late magic to secure tight wins over Augsburg and RB Leipzig, and they came up empty in the magic department in a 0-0 draw with Gladbach last weekend. They’ve been just scraping by with several key pieces playing in the Africa Cup of Nations, and while that’s wrapping up, star scorer Victor Boniface is out for a few more weeks with injury. They missed him greatly last weekend.
Spain
Granted, Barcelona and Real Madrid are always the primary focuses of attention in Spain, but February belongs to Girona and Atletico Madrid. Including a February 3 match against Real Sociedad, Girona will face three of the top six teams in the LaLiga table this month. They are currently in first, a point ahead of Real Madrid (which has a game in hand), but Opta’s power ratings aren’t yet buying what the Gironistes are selling. They give Real Madrid a 93% chance of taking the title. But if Girona comes up big this month, the odds will have no choice but to shift a decent amount toward the underdogs.
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Atleti, meanwhile, is in an interesting spot. They have lost to Barcelona, Athletic Club, and Girona over the last two months, which has left them in a precarious position, clinging to a top-four position by just two points over Athletic (and tied with a flailing Barca). But a Copa del Rey win over Real Madrid has positioned them as the favorites in that competition — they have lifted that trophy just once since 1996, taking down Real Madrid in extra time in the 2013 final — and while they’re the underdog in the Champions League round of 16 against Inter, it’s not the least manageable draw imaginable.
By the end of February, this season could be putting off either precarious or triumphant vibes.
Italy
Liverpool vs. Arsenal is huge, but it might not even be the biggest match this coming Sunday. Juventus, unbeaten since September and unburdened by European play, has climbed to within one point of Inter in the Serie A race, even though Inter also hasn’t lost in league play since September. The Nerazzurri do have a game in hand, but a loss on Sunday could significantly change the calculus.
Meanwhile, the race for fourth place is almost equally gripping. Granted, Italy has solid odds of claiming a fifth bid in next year’s Champions League, but it’s still only four for now, and the gap between fourth-place Atalanta and 10th-place Torino is just five points. Lazio and Roma are both rebounding from poor starts, Fiorentina and Bologna still have time to bounce back after a poor January for both, and somehow Napoli, stuck in hangover mode for months, remains only five points outside the top four.
Look at it this way: Serie A might have more plot twists remaining than any other major European league.
Elsewhere in Europe
We’re lacking for gripping title races outside of Europe’s four biggest leagues. PSG leads Nice by six points in France, PSV leads Feyenoord by 12 in the Netherlands and while they’ve failed to seal the deal before, Union Saint-Gilloise currently boasts an eight-point lead over Anderlecht in Belgium.
Granted, PSG’s form remains an interesting topic because of how it might translate to Champions League play — a test against fifth-place Lille could be telling ahead of the round of 16 — but the most interesting February match in France might be between seventh-place Marseille and 16th-place Lyon. It’s one of the most heated derbies in Europe (too heated, actually), and it means even more than usual for both teams. Lyon is still struggling to get its head above water in its relegation scrap; after winning three straight in league play, they allowed three goals in losses to both Le Havre and Rennes. Marseille, meanwhile, sits five points outside of the top four after three consecutive league draws.
PSV plays its own always-heated rivalry match this Saturday, visiting the Johan Cruyff Arena to face an Ajax team that finally has its act together. After a dreadful start, they’ve taken 29 points from their last 11 league matches to rise back to fifth in the Eredivisie, just four points behind third-place Twente. PSV’s league lead is safe, but they could hand Ajax a huge setback on Saturday.
We do have a couple of interesting league races to follow. Sporting CP leads Benfica by just one point in Portugal (and Porto by four), though none of the top three play each other in February. And in Austria, three-time defending champion RB Salzburg only leads Sturm Graz by two points. A loss on Feb. 9 would make things awfully interesting.
Women’s club soccer
February doesn’t offer the same Champions League stakes on the women’s side — the group stage wraps up this week, while the quarterfinals don’t start until mid-March — but that’s fine. There’s plenty to track in the domestic races.
PSG desperately needs a win in Lyon to have any hope of a title race in France, as Lyon has won all 13 of its league matches by a combined 51-6 to hold what feels like a commanding lead (even though PSG has dropped only five points). In Germany, Wolfsburg leads Bayern by one point and Eintracht Frankfurt by five at the midway point, while in England, one match past the midway point, Chelsea holds a three-point advantage over both Manchester City and Arsenal.
In Spain, we never get an actual title race — Barcelona has won its 14 league matches by a combined 65-3 — but Real Madrid (33 points), Madrid CFF (31), Levante (31), and Atletico Madrid (30) are in a heated battle for second, at least. That makes Levante vs. Madrid pretty big.
International soccer
Feb. 6: Asian Cup semifinals
Feb. 7: AFCON semifinals
Feb. 10: Asian Cup final
Feb. 11: AFCON final
January’s two out-of-window international tournaments are reaching their closing stages, and they’ve been highly enjoyable if you like mess.
Heading into the Africa Cup of Nations, the betting favorites were Morocco, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Nigeria and Egypt. Of those six, only Morocco and Senegal won their groups, Algeria finished last and failed to advance, and Ivory Coast, the tournament host, finished third in their group after a dreadful 4-0 loss to Equatorial Guinea. They fired their coach thereafter and only qualified for the round of 16 when Ghana blew a two-goal lead to Mozambique in stoppage time in their final group stage game. Of course, they then proceeded to beat defending champion Senegal in penalties, making it the seventh straight AFCON that the reigning champ failed to reach even the quarterfinals.
