Champions League: titanic shock for PSG and big stakes for French clubs, program and ranking

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Champions League titanic shock for PSG and big stakes for

Faced with Manchester City this week, PSG is playing for its future in the Champions League.

The week of all dangers for PSG. Facing Manchester City, back in form in recent weeks including a 6-0 victory in the Premier League, Paris must take the three points to continue to believe in qualification, just like Pep Guardiola’s English. “We have two finals (the last two Champions League matches). If we win both, we qualify. If we win one, there is a good chance too but we still have to take points because we are is put alone in this mess.” For his part, Luis Enrique wanted to be reassuring: “We are in a good dynamic. We are prepared and optimistic.” But in the event of defeat, elimination would be close for the Parisians, especially before a final trip to Stuttgart.

For others, the challenges are numerous. Monaco, in great difficulty for several weeks in the championship, could secure its place for the play-offs against Aston Villa, but with two difficult matches to come (the last against Inter), ASM could lose everything. For Brest, this is the opportunity to finish the job against Shakhtar because the last match will be against real Madrid and the points will be complicated to find. For Lille, qualification has already been achieved and the Mastiffs want to take advantage of the moment and have fun on the Liverpool pitch.

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Results of last matches

Discover the results of the latest Champions League matches each day, from the final whistle:

General ranking

Here is the Champions League ranking, updated after each day of competition. Search for a team to find out their ranking:

Schedule of upcoming matches

The regular season now consists of eight days spread over five months. Here are the posters for the next day :

Latest updates

10:20 – Ambitious Genesio

“We have two matches left to play and win to qualify directly for the round of 16. Which would firstly be a small achievement, and secondly, which would also be good for our schedule, which has been very busy since the beginning of August” explained the Lille coach who faces Liverpool this Tuesday, January 21.

08:00 – Tuesday’s program

Monaco against Aston Villa and Lille on the Lille lawn are on the program for this Champions League day.

What are the new rules for the Champions League?

The Champions League lost its group stage in 2024-2025. This is transformed into a “regular season”, with a single classification. For the first stage of this new generation Champions League, each team must play 8 matches (compared to 6 previously), with a different opponent each time. Also finished is the system of round-trip matches, characteristic of previous versions. The matches were decided by a draw carried out at the end of August and based on a hat system, making it possible to preserve a certain fairness in the proceedings.

The Champions League then returns to a semblance of normality at the end of this mini championship. Only a semblance since the teams having finished in the first 8 places qualify directly for the round of 16, with the teams classified between 9th and 24th places, who will have to go through play-offs in a round-trip format. Previously, the final phase of the Champions League began directly with the quarter-finals.

Another notable difference: the lowest ranked teams (between places 25 to 36) are eliminated from the competition and none of them are drafted into Europa League. The draw for the final phase also changes and takes place with a seeding system. Thus, the leader in the ranking cannot be in the same part of the table as his runner-up. The third will be in the opposite part of the fourth, etc.

What matches for French clubs?

Four Ligue 1 clubs were offered the opportunity to travel the star track this season, with a few opponents in common thanks to this new formula, but undoubtedly very different destinies. PSG, which set the top 8 as its objective, obtained one of the most difficult draws. After starting against a novice team at this level, Girona, he inherited big machines like Arsenal, Antoine Griezmann’s Atlético Madrid, Manchester City, but also the ogre Bayern Munich.

Lille also had a complicated draw, with Real Madrid and its neighbor Atlético (bis), Juventus Turin and Liverpool. Brest, surprising 3rd in Ligue 1 last season, inherited a first match deemed “affordable”, with the reception of Sturm Graz. But the rest of the program consisted of Real Madrid (bis) and FC Barcelona. Monaco finally drew Barça, Bologna, Benfica and Inter Milan. Here are the next matches of French clubs:

PSG

Lille

Brest

Monaco

Dams and final phase

The final draw, made up of knockout matches, was organized according to play-offs in mid-February followed by the round of 16. The grand final has been scheduled for Munich on Saturday May 31, 2025.

  • Play-off draw: January 31, 2025

  • Play-offs for the knockout phase: February 11-12 and 18-19, 2025

  • Drawing of the full table: February 21, 2025

  • Round of 16: March 4-5 and 11-12, 2025

  • Quarter-finals: April 8-9 and 15-16, 2025

  • Semi-finals: April 29-30 and May 6-7, 2025

  • Final: May 31, 2025

On which TV channel to watch the Champions League in France?

The battle for TV rights continued to rage before this Champions League season. UEFA awarded the French TV rights for the “Big Ears Cup” to Canal+, which thus obtained the privilege of broadcasting the Champions League.

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