Now the jeopardy really kicks in for the Champions League with a title chase, pride and hard cash on the line.
At least four former European champions will be among eight teams eliminated when the new knockout playoff round ends this week.
Real Madrid or Manchester City, Bayern Munich or Celtic, AC Milan or Feyenoord and PSV Eindhoven or Juventus.
Their European seasons will be over in February before even reaching the round of 16 that teams like Madrid and Man City, who meet in their second-leg game Wednesday, have come to expect.
Indeed, City coach Pep Guardiola has never failed in 16 seasons of coaching — four at Barcelona, three at Bayern and nine in Manchester — to take his team to the round of 16 in the Champions League.
Advancing to the last-16 is worth 11 million euros ($11.5 million) in prize money from UEFA. While that pays just a few months of salary for Kylian Mbappé or Erling Haaland, it is a path toward a bigger share of the 2.5 billion euros ($2.6 billion) total prize fund shared by 36 teams that started in the league phase in September.
It took 152 games so far in the new expanded format — already 21% more than the entire 125-game competition in each of the past 21 seasons — just to reach this stage.
The business end of the Champions League arguably only starts now, with 37 games left through the May 31 final in Munich.
Heavyweight clash in Madrid
Real Madrid vs. Manchester City at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium is a classic match in the modern Champions League: A 3-3 draw in the quarterfinals last year and a thrilling 3-1 win for Madrid in extra-time to decide their semifinal in 2022. Each time coach Carlo Ancelotti’s team went on to win the title, extending the record to 15 in the competition's 70-year history.
Their first meeting in Madrid, a group-stage game in September 2012, was a late comeback by Madrid with two goals after the 85th minute to win 3-2 — just as it was in Manchester last Tuesday in the first leg.
That 2012-13 season was the last time City did not play in the round of 16. The English champion’s streak of 11 straight years, including finally lifting the trophy in 2023, is at serious risk Wednesday.
German clubs' home comfort. Tense week for Italian clubs
Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund start home games with leads from the first leg as they seek to join Bayer Leverkusen in the round of 16. Bayern hosts Celtic on Tuesday with a 2-1 lead and Dortmund starts 3-0 up on Sporting Lisbon in the early game Wednesday.
Paris Saint-Germain also has a 3-0 advantage at home, against Brest on Wednesday. It will be the clubs' third meeting in 19 days. Benfica also won on the road, 1-0 at Monaco, and hosts the return leg on Tuesday.
Juventus takes a 2-1 lead to Eindhoven on Wednesday and Club Brugge is 2-1 up going to Atalanta on Tuesday in Bergamo. About 30 miles (50 kilometers) away, in Tuesday’s early game, AC Milan hosts Feyenoord trying to overturn a 1-0 deficit.
West is best and wealthiest
The Champions League is dominated more than ever by teams from the richest leagues in western Europe, banking hundreds of millions more in prize money.
No team from eastern Europe qualified for the knockout stage. Croatia’s champion Dinamo Zagreb was edged out in 25th place on goal difference behind Brugge.
All eight seeded teams already in the round of 16 come from the five countries — England, Italy, Spain, Germany, France — ranked highest by UEFA based on results in all European competitions across five seasons.
Sixth-ranked Netherlands and No. 7 Portugal are well set to place at least one team in the rest of the competition. The lowest-ranked country still involved, No. 14 Scotland, is likely to have Celtic eliminated by Bayern.
Round of 16 draw
The pairings will be set Friday at UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, at midday local time (1100 GMT).
The eight playoff winners will be unseeded, and play the home leg first, against the seeded teams that placed in the top eight of the 36-team league phase standings.
First-leg games are played March 4-5 and return games are one week later. There is now no separate draw for the quarterfinals and semifinals because the tennis-style seeded bracket is set through to the final.
Seedings: 1 Liverpool; 2 Barcelona; 3 Arsenal; 4 Inter Milan; 5 Atletico Madrid; 6 Bayer Leverkusen; 7 Lille; 8 Aston Villa.
Liverpool and Barcelona will be drawn against the winners of either of the playoffs involving the Nos. 15 and 16 seeds, PSG and Benfica. As Real Madrid placed 11th in the league, the winner of its playoff with Man City will next play the fifth- or sixth-place team, Atletico or Leverkusen.