Champions League recap, projections: Who will win it all, Best XI so far, more

The payoff was worth it, right? When the UEFA Champions League‘s first-ever League Phase began this season — with an expanded field, no groups and just one giant, 36-team table — it was a little bit difficult to work our way into the tournament. It was hard to tell what early wins and losses actually meant and the consequences of a slump felt pretty low, even for Europe’s powerhouse clubs.

But then Paris Saint-Germain entered the penultimate matchday outside the bubble, needing a pair of good results to actually qualify for the knockout rounds. Then Manchester City waited until the last 30 minutes to actually secure a spot during an absolutely chaotic, 64-goal, 18-matches-all-at-once final matchday.

In the end, almost nothing was decided until the final day and of Wednesday’s 18 matches, only about six had no real stakes.

How decisive was that final day? Of the top 16 teams in the final League Phase table, 12 won on Wednesday, and one of only two losses was suffered by a Liverpool team that had already clinched a spot in the top two. The team that finished in sixth place (Bayer Leverkusen) finished with only six more points than the team that finished 26th (Stuttgart). This thing was an absolute what-if machine, and it almost snagged a couple of the sport’s heavyweights.

The new format drew plenty of skepticism early on, and that’s somewhat justifiable — if only because at first glance it just seemed like a way for UEFA to coax more matches and more money out of its bellcow event (and because, at first, two of the four extra bids were intended to go to big, successful clubs that hadn’t otherwise qualified for the Champions League). But once the extra bids were made a bit more democratic — in the end, the final two bids went to the highest-placed teams in the countries that had the most success in UEFA tournaments the year before — there was a lot to like here.

Teams were exposed to more opponents and got a bit more runway to find their footing. Dinamo Zagreb nearly advanced despite losing 9-2 to Bayern Munich on Matchday 1. (In fact, if they’d only lost 6-2, they’d have made it.) Celtic fans got to celebrate three home wins as the tournament’s more middleweight clubs actually got to duke it out with other middleweights. Only two of 36 teams went winless, and only two had clinched a top-eight spot heading into the final matchday.

There were more fun moments for home crowds, and there was more limbo at the end. It’s hard to ask for much more than that, right?

So, as we prepare for Friday’s round-of-24 draw, let’s take a quick look back at Matchday 8, the best players of the League Phase overall and the teams most well-positioned for a title run.

Most impactful games of Matchday 8

There weren’t many genuinely meaningless matches in the final matchday, but a few still stood out from the pack.