Champions League draw winners and losers: Arsenal cruising

The path to Budapest is set. The 16 remaining teams in the Champions League discovered their fate on Friday morning as the bracket for the knockout stages threw up some familiar ties and favorable paths between now and May 30. In the latter category fell yet another meeting between Real Madrid and Manchester City, while there will also be a rematch of the Club World Cup final when Chelsea take on Paris Saint-Germain. With those four, Liverpool and Bayern Munich on one side of the bracket, there certainly appears to be a harder side through which to get to the final.

If there is, Arsenal certainly didn’t find themselves on it. Drawn with Bayer Leverkusen for the round of 16 and then the winner of Bodo/Glimt vs. Sporting CP if they make it through, it is with Mikel Arteta’s Premier League leaders that we begin our assessment of the winners and losers of this draw.

Winners: Arsenal

You will hear plenty of cliches around knockout football and Arsenal in the coming weeks. A few of them will probably come from Mikel Arteta. And look, cliches are cliches for a reason. You can only beat who’s ahead of you. The best thing to do is concentrate on what you can control. There are no easy games in European football.

All well and good, but there are still difficulty levels to the Champions League, and Arsenal’s is nowhere near as challenging as it might have been. Even if you assess the sides of the bracket on the most basic terms of European pedigree, it gives you a sense of how kind draw impresario Giorgio Marchetti and Ivan Rakitic were to the Premier League leaders. The side in which Bayern Munich are the top seed share 31 European Cups between them. There are five on the other end. All of them were won by Barcelona, the most recent in 2015.

In more analytical terms, eight of the clubs ranked in the top 10 ratings by Club ELO (an estimate of their strength based on past results) are in the last 16 of the Champions League. Six of them are on the other side of the draw from the top side Arsenal. The others, sixth-ranked Barcelona, cannot meet Arteta’s men until the semifinals.

Between now and then, they will have to face 22nd-ranked Bayer Leverkusen, who currently sit sixth in the Bundesliga and are a shadow of the team that competed for big honors under Arteta’s great friend Xabi Alonso. After that, it’ll be the best of teams ranked 13th (Sporting) and 41st (Bodo/Glimt) by ELO. There’s no draw you’d quite want from the possible semifinalists, but at some stage, you have to beat the very good teams. It is a triumph, however, for Arsenal that they don’t have to do so until rather late in the season. Meanwhile, their likeliest rivals for the Champions League crown will be knocking lumps out of each other on the other side of the draw.

Losers: Manchester City and Real Madrid

The first tie to be played in five consecutive seasons of the Champions League, you could forgive these two clubs, their players and their supporters for getting a bit sick of the sight of each other. If this tie delivers the sort of reliable daftness that it has in recent years — much of which involves Real Madrid implausibly wriggling out of a bind of their own making — then there might just about be enough juice in this for the neutral.

“For our club, as much [as] you play against the best times in all history in this competition, you learn, you improve, and are better in the future,” said Pep Guardiola in response to a familiar draw.

The bigger problem for these two, however, is that getting through this tie really is only the start of the trouble. In all likelihood, Bayern Munich, victorious over Atalanta, will lie in wait for two teams who haven’t looked anywhere near their best defensively. Even if they got through that, it would be Paris Saint-Germain, Liverpool, Chelsea or a presumably fearless Galatasaray waiting in line. That’s a brutal path, all the more challenging for teams with ground to make up in their domestic title races.

Suppose, for instance, that City get past Madrid and run into Bayern Munich. This is what their fixture list would look like from March 7 onwards, all games in the Premier League unless stated. Newcastle (a, FA Cup), Real Madrid (a, UCL), West Ham (a), Real Madrid (h), Arsenal (EFL Cup Final), Chelsea (a), Bayern Munich (h), Arsenal (h), Bayern Munich (a). He’ll never say it, but surely Guardiola would have preferred a smattering of Bodo/Glimts and Sportings in there.

Winner: Enzo Maresca

It wouldn’t be wise to discount Chelsea entirely against PSG. After all the signs emanating from the Parc des Princes are that the holders look a long way off the team that swept the Premier League’s finalists on the way to glory last season. Chelsea too have proven themselves both under current management and their predecessors to be a team that tends to deliver in the big games.

Here’s the thing, though, no matter how well they deliver, it’s really hard to believe that Chelsea could navigate themselves to a two-leg triumph as resounding as the 90-minute win over PSG in the Club World Cup final back in the summer. Watching from afar, Enzo Maresca might be entitled to really enjoy the troubles of his former employer. After all, so much of the pre-match talk will focus on the man-to-man press in the East Rutherford heat, the positioning of Reece James in central midfield to disrupt what seemed to be PSG’s all-conquering triumvirate, how Chelsea got Cole Palmer the sort of quick ball that allowed him to rip the final apart in an instant.

Maresca doesn’t have to adapt to the adaptations that Luis Enrique is sure to make. He doesn’t have to coach his way past an opponent who might be pretty keen for revenge against the only team to stop them winning a trophy in 2024-25. His record in European competition remains blemishless. It is up to Liam Rosenior to work out how to improve on Chelsea’s finest hour of the last half-decade.

Winners: Bodo/Glimt

Now maybe Kjetil Knutsen and his players have got to the stage of the Champions League where they’d quite like to have a swing at one of the continent’s true super teams over two legs. Plenty of underdogs think that way, and that’s totally reasonable. What’s worth noting right now is that Bodo/Glimt have done plenty of proving themselves against the big boys. That’s how they got to the round of 16 in the first place, by beating Manchester City, Atletico Madrid and then stunning Inter twice.

It might have been nice to welcome City back to Aspmyra Stadion, to ruin another Erling Haaland homecoming, but not as nice as a spot in the quarterfinals will feel. And while Bodo/Glimt are certainly underdogs, there’s a chance for them against Sporting. Not a great one, but Opta, for instance, gives them a 36% chance of overcoming the Portuguese champions. Some of that might be down to the fact that Rui Borges’ team might not be the best placed to exploit Bodo/Glimt’s weaknesses.

The Norwegians have given up a lot of shots this tournament; their 19.9 per game allowed the most by any since the start of the league phase. However, their opponent only averaged 11.1 in the league phase, scoring 2.1 goals per game off 1.4 xG. Sporting have attacking talent, but Luis Suarez (not that one), Trincao, Alisson Santos, and Geovany Quenda are not the most intimidating front four that Sporting have put out in recent years. It might not be enough to expose Bodo/Glimt’s weaknesses in defense, and that gives the underdogs the chance to make history at the other end.

Losers: Tottenham

How can a relatively favorable draw have you in the losers’ section? Well, in the very rare set of circumstances where you could probably do with getting out of the Champions League post haste. That’s Tottenham this season, with no realistic chance of winning this competition and every reason to focus their attention on matters elsewhere. Igor Tudor probably isn’t leading this team to the Championship, but there’s a chance, and when there’s even the hint of the prospect of relegation from the Premier League (Spurs are four points clear of the drop zone) for an injury-addled squad, you could do with wrapping up your other assignments.

Spurs would have been in this situation whatever the outcome of Friday’s draw, and it is fair to say that these circumstances would have been even more pronounced if they’d drawn Galatasaray. Atletico Madrid are a better team and one that will be pretty pleased to have drawn Tottenham. They are not however, so good that you would feel certain that Tottenham can quickly wrap up their involvement in the Champions League and get on to the really important business of the season.

Champions League round of 16 draw

1. PSG vs. Chelsea
2. Galatasaray vs. Liverpool
3. Real Madrid vs. Manchester City
4. Atalanta vs. Bayern Munich
5. Newcastle United vs. Barcelona
6. Atletico Madrid vs. Tottenham
7. Bodo/Glimt vs. Sporting
8. Bayer Leverkusen vs. Arsenal