The Champions League is back! Oh how we have missed the bright lights of those European nights over the last six weeks. Well miss no longer, because the competition is back for the final two rounds of league fixtures before we really enter into the business of crowning the continent’s outstanding team.
In perhaps the week’s biggest game, Arsenal could potentially wrap up top spot and set themselves on course for the first eight wins from eight season in this new format, but to do so they will have to beat Inter in the San Siro. Their North London rivals don’t have such lofty ambitions and Tottenham’s clash with Borussia Dortmund is crucial for another reason; winning it might be the only way that Thomas Frank keeps his job. With that and more drama at Real Madrid to look forward to, let’s dive into the previews, shall we?
1. Arsenal and Inter vie for set piece supremacy
In all likelihood the last obstacle between Arsenal and a 100% record in this season’s league phase is the one they will find at the San Siro. Even a heavily rotated team will surely beat Kairat, so if Mikel Arteta wants a weird sort of immortality — and his decision to bench Bukayo Saka for Saturday’s trip to Nottingham Forest suggests he might — he is going to need to do better than last season’s trip to Inter. That 1-0 defeat is a curious game looking back on it. A cagey affair broken open by a set piece at one end amid questions over a penalty at the other, it would barely be more 2025-26 coded if it were posting throwbacks to 2016 on its Instagram stories.
Expect much the same this time around too. After all, this game is pitting the dead ball darlings of the Premier League with the outstanding contender from the rest of Europe’s top five leagues. Both score lots. Neither concede many at all. “Arsenal score a lot from set pieces,” noted Cristian Chivu today, “but Arsenal should also be worried because we score a lot of them too.”
Corners in particular are where these two do their damage. When you add in domestic league play with continental competitions Arsenal lead the way alongside Tottenham for the most goals from corners on 13. One behind them are Inter, whose 12 goals come in no small part because Chivu’s side are capable of creating corners for themselves at greater volume than anyone else. Get the ball in the attacking third a lot and you are bound to earn yourself a few chances to whip the ball in.
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There are certainly differences between how Inter and Arsenal might approach things when they stand over the corner. The latter have an insistence on inswingers — only seven of their 153 deliveries in league and Europe have curved away from the goalkeeper –that might seem perverse if it weren’t so remorselessly effective. Within the limited parameters they set for themselves Arsenal have plenty of variety, whether it be hitting big Gabriel Magalhaes when he wins his duels or hanging one to the back post for a waiting Leandro Trossard.
Inter, meanwhile, deliver more outswingers than in — in fact they bend it away more than any other team from the top five leagues — but not by a vast amount. It speaks to how there is a degree more variety and experimentation in the basic form that Angelo Palombo, not quite a full time set piece coach but certainly Inter’s lead in that field, has brought to the form. There seems to be a bit more of a mess about, find out approach from the Nerazzuri, one typified in probably the goal of the season so far, Piotr Zielinski’s goal of the season contender lock against Verona back in December. Hakan Calhanoglu eschewed the inswinger to drill one to the edge of the box, where Zielinski met it on the run to side foot home.
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Of course you see the odd goal from a corner that looks like this but usually the player who meets the ball is actually stood on the edge of the box, rather than upping the difficulty level by trying to meet the ball on the run. The vibe is a little bit don’t try this at home kids, you’ll look very daft. It’s not like Inter were testing it out all that often either.
“It came from something we worked on in training yesterday,” said Zielinski at the time. “Angelo Palombo pays a lot of attention to these details. He studies other leagues and came up with the idea. We tried it once in training and this was the second time.” Even Chivu wasn’t very happy with the move, only slightly joking afterwards when he said that if it had gone wrong Verona might have hit them on the counterattack.
That speaks to a freewheeling approach from Inter that certainly seems to be there when you watch back this season’s many corners. Don’t overindex it though, an awful lot of those set piece goals come for the same reason Arsenal’s do. What unites both teams is that they have players who can deliver the ball on a dime — Calhanoglu, Federico Di Marco, Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka — and targets who are almost unstoppable if the deliveries are right.
The world and its uncle know how deadly Gabriel is when someone puts a cross in the penalty area. He is one of six players in Europe’s top five leagues who has scored four from set pieces in Europe and league play this season. Marcus Thuram has five. It’s not too hard to understand why an outstanding 6ft 4in center forward might be getting so many goals when Calhanoglu and Di Marco are crossing the ball for him.
If this is a battle of the set pieces, who might win it? Well based on what happens when the mega athletes of the Premier League run into the rest of Europe, there’s only one winner. The top five xG creators from non-penalty dead balls in this season’s UEFA competitions are Nottingham Forest, Midtjyyland (who along with stablemates Brentford have been set piece pioneers), Crystal Palace, Liverpool and Arsenal. When Liverpool, who have spent 2025-26 in a waking nightmares of corners and long balls, rock up to Eintracht Frankfurt and bully them in the air, you have to assume that the Premier League team are always going to win the battles when the ball goes out of play. Inter might be one of the few for whom that might not be the case.
Viewing information
- Date: Tuesday, Jan. 20 | Time: 3 p.m. ET
- Location: San Siro — Milan
- Live stream: Paramount+
- Odds: Milan +165; Draw +225; Real Madrid +185
2. Champions League offers little respite for Frank
On this day 12 months ago, a 3-2 defeat at Everton sent Tottenham careening. Fifteenth in the table, their domestic season was effectively over. There were those within the fanbase who had long since lost patience with Ange Postecoglou and viable questions over whether he would be back for the third season in north London but the idea that he might be gone imminently had little wider traction.
The same could not be said for Thomas Frank, recipient last week of a public vote of confidence no less dreaded than the Pirate Roberts himself. He will take charge of Tuesday’s visit of Borussia Dortmund and might see out a league phase from which Tottenham should qualify. Chief executive Vinai Venkatesham is the sort of leader who wants to give managers every chance possible before dispensing with their services and Frank himself feels the backing of those above him.
“I have just been feeling the trust along the way,” he said in his pre-match press conference. “I have said that after every match. I had lunch with Nick [Beucher, co-CEO of owners Tavistock Group], Johan [Lange, sporting director] and Vinai today, so all good. I know it is part of the media circus and the only thing I am focused about is tomorrow.
“As long as we win football matches and make sure we do that, win enough, then everyone will support us.”
Frank is right that a win would buy him time but with the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as mutinous as it was on Saturday’s defeat to West Ham, it is hard to shake the sense of a man in a spiral that only a miracle can pull him out of. Supporters don’t believe in this style of play and that transmits to players on both sides, only heightening nerves and hindering attempts to build play with a team who lack the tools to progress the ball through midfield.
It has been hard for Frank, who has spent the whole season without his two most creative players in James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski. Covering for them is an almighty burden for the undersized Xavi Simons, whose adaptation from the Bundesliga to the Premier League has been both better than might have been feared a few months ago and not really at the level that would be expected from a $70 million signing. Dominic Solanke’s minutes have just passed the hour mark.
Mixing all that together with a manager who was deliberately hired to bring some post-Postecoglou steel, you would expect a big drop off in output. And yet it’s still awful. That Spurs have 48 goals in 31 games is the result of a quite spectacular xG overperfomance. This is a team that cannot get the ball through midfield, that cannot get touches in the box and cannot win the ball up high at any better than an upper mid table level. And there is no evidence that any of this is improving as Frank gets more time to work with what he has.
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And all that might be a problem for another day if only they were in a different European competition. Frank was right when, three weeks ago, he questioned Spurs’ status as a “Champions League club.” Even with all the breaks in the world going in their favor, Tottenham are not a team who could win the Champions League. A year ago, they always profiled as one of the favorites to win the Europa League, even when their defense was held together by sellotape and Pedro Porro. That bought Postecoglou the remainder of this season. On current performances, the best case scenario for Frank might be that he gets to round out the league phase, just in case something wild happens to a team already on 11 points. Unless he makes that 17 with a win at Burnley in between, he will remain on borrowed time.
Viewing Information
- Date: Tuesday, Jan. 20 | Time: 3 p.m. ET
- Location: Tottenham Hotspur Stadium — London
- Live stream: Paramount+
- Odds: Tottenham Hotspur +180; Draw +250; Borussia Dortmund +145
3. Are Real Madrid still a favorite?
Consider this a paean for the Real Madrid that might have been. Four months ago Xabi Alonso had his team playing arguably the best football in Europe, a team with a clear identity and whose press and possess style allowed them to commit bodies forward while retaining defensive solidity. This was going to be the year that Kylian Mbappe affirmed his status as the best player in the world as Madrid romped to another Champions League title.
It still might be. There is no need to relitigate the firing of Alonso and the capitulation to player power that brought it about. Madrid are where they are, with a manager who had previously coached 19 competitive matches with the club’s B team, currently in Spain’s third tier. Alvaro Arbeloa is in no doubt how things are working from here on out. “It’s my job to tell the players what to do, and if they don’t do it, it’s because I didn’t explain it well, so it’s my fault,” he said last week.
Yeah…
Jurgen Klopp reiterates disinterest in Real Madrid job: ‘I don’t want to be somewhere else’
Pardeep Cattry
Anyway, you’re all thinking about Carlo Ancelotti now, aren’t you? The great rejoinder to the suggestion that Madrid can’t just vibe their way to the Champions League is that the old boss was all about liberating his players to play their way and watching the trophies roll in. Of course Ancelotti had a better grasp of Bernabeu kremlinology than Alonso but to frame his success in such a fashion is to betray a knowledge of his work that barely extends beyond the memes of him eyebrow raised or celebrating with a cigar.
A good times curator is not the sort who alights on Jude Bellingham as the solution to Madrid’s lack of a striker. Ancelotti found a way for Vinicius Junior and Mbappe to both occupy the left flank to relative success last season too. Ancelotti adapts to what he has but, as Gareth Bale found out during their time in Madrid, he will not throw out his system midseason to indulge the needs of one player.
It is of course too soon after one league game and that cup exit at the hands of Albacete to know if Arbeloa is prepared to be so tolerant. The evidence we have — both his comments and a second half against Levante that looked rather like Jude Bellingham as one man midfield while four attackers hung about up top — encourages one to fear the worst. And if that proves to be the case then it is hard to believe that Madrid can be the inner circle contenders they looked like being so recently.
Viewing information
- Date: Tuesday, Jan. 20 | Time: 3 p.m. ET
- Location: Estadio Santiago Bernabeu — Madrid
- Live stream: Paramount+
- Odds: Real Madrid -338; Draw +500; AS Monaco +756
