Bonus Round-Up: Champions League Draw

This Monday, the balls will be mixed with the stars in Nyon again, and the ties for the Champions League round-of-sixteen will be drawn – enough of a reason for us to take a look at the statistics from an FC Bayern point of view.

Felix

December 11, 2016

Before the 1-0 win against Atletico Madrid, FC Bayern had already qualified from their group in second place, after top spot slipped out of their grasp with defeats in Madrid and Rostov.

Now the winners of the other groups loom as potential opponents in the first knock-out round, with the exception of the German sides. As such, BVB’s late draw with Real Madrid prevented both a meeting with the Galácticos (since they also qualified in second as a result), as well as a trip to Dortmund (themselves a German side). As a result of these many limitations, there are varying possibilities of getting various opponents, although it may not seem so at first. The calculation of these possibilities is rather complex, and was laid out more clearly by Julian Ritter for Zeit Online.

Wer gegen wen? Das Achtelfinale der Champions League ist gar nicht so leicht auszulosen. https://t.co/wXBndBpSiD pic.twitter.com/JT6s44ttdM
— zeitonlinesport (@zeitonlinesport) 8. Dezember 2016

The table pictured shows the likelihood of all possible meetings.

Potential opponents for FC Bayern are Arsenal, Napoli, FC Barcelona, AS Monaco, Juventus and the surprising champions of England, Leicester City. If you consider the individual possibilities, it occurs that Barcelona, with 23.1% likelihood, are the most likely opponents, while a journey to Napoli only has a 13.6% chance of coming to pass.

Lastly, it seems that coming second in the group may not be such a big disadvantage, since three giants in PSG, Manchester City and Real Madrid all failed to top their groups and are thus ruled out as potential opponents in this round.