Gracenote Sports UEFA Champions League Analysis

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1 Gracenote Sports UEFA Champions League Analysis Featuring: Predicting the final Sixteen Week One Upsets Must See Matchup Avoid Opening Day Defeat Losers and Winners From the Draw Top Group Phase Scorers

2 Page 2 Analyses UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League is football's premier club competition, bringing together the best European club teams into a season-long tournament which culminates in a final match that will be watched live by hundreds of millions of fans around the globe. Gracenote Sports world-renowned football database includes information spanning the entire history of the competition from the earliest days when it was known as the Champions Cup up to the most recent Champions League competition. Based on advanced analysis of this historical data and the statistics of individual players, Gracenote s Euro Club Index enables informed predictions on what to expect including the most likely teams to advance from the group phase and other sharp insights. While upsets by definition are hard to predict, we are able to estimate how many matches are likely to be won by the underdog in any given week and how many of the favorites are likely to go through to the knockout phase of the competition. The Euro Club Index The Euro Club Index is a proprietary ranking of all European football clubs based on results over a fouryear period with more recent results weighted more heavily by the algorithm. Teams win or lose rating points from opponents every time a match is played. The number of points won or lost depends on how far apart the two clubs are. Stronger clubs will win fewer points by beating weaker clubs. However, if defeated, they stand to lose many points. The ranking of top flight football clubs is available publicly and updated on a daily basis at The Euro Club Index is a collaboration with Hypercube Business Innovation.

3 Page 3 A. Predicting the final Sixteen The Champions League kicks off with 32 clubs in eight groups. This field will eventually be cut in half for the knockout phase which takes place between February and June The Euro Club Index projects those which will likely comprise "The Sixteen" by advancing in the competition. Prior to the start of the Champions League, the Euro Club Index odds suggest that 12 to 13 clubs from our group of "The Sixteen" will make it with three or four clubs from outside our current list surprising the more favored teams to make it to next year's knockout phase. FC Barcelona is the most likely to progress to the knockout phase and should do so for the 13 th successive season. Rival Real Madrid will likely make it to the knockout matches for the 20 th season in a row, one ahead of Arsenal which will be there for the 19 th year in a row if the club progresses as expected. On the other hand, competition debutants Leicester City should also have a successful group phase after being drawn into a group in which they are the strongest. This is despite the fact that Leicester City is ranked as only the 32nd best team in the Euro Club Index. Below are The Sixteen - the clubs Gracenote predicts will advance to the second round of the tournament. They are ranked in order of likelihood of advancing to the knockout stage. Among this elite group, FC Barcelona has the highest chance for success and Tottenham Hotspur, the lowest. As the competition progresses, we will track the list and provide relevant updates to our predictions.

4 Page 4 B. Week One Upsets Upsets or shocks by definition are rarely predictable. A shock is an outcome in which the eventual winner had less than a 20% chance of victory in the match according to the Euro Club Index odds. If history is any indication, the Champions League this year will likely have at least one match in the opening round that results in an upset as it has in each of the last five seasons. It is likely that at least one of the 11 matches this week in which a team has less than 20% chance of winning will, in fact, produce a shock victory. Given the odds for the 16 matches this week, two or three should be won by the underdog. Correctly identifying upset match or matches though is a far more challenging prospect. Least likely winners on Matchday 1 Team Match ECI chance of victory Celtic at FC Barcelona 1% FC Rostov at Bayern Munich 3% Sporting CP at Real Madrid 4% Besiktas at Benfica 12% Ludogorets at FC Basel 12% Sevilla FC at Juventus 14% Arsenal at Paris Saint-Germain 15% FC Copenhagen at FC Porto 15% Legia Warsaw at Borussia Dortmund 15% Borussia Mönchengladbach at Manchester City 16% Dynamo Zagreb at Olympique Lyon 19% AS Monaco at Tottenham Hotspur 21% CSKA Moscow at Bayer Leverkusen 21% PSV at Atlético Madrid 23% Napoli at Dynamo Kiev 31% Leicester City at Club Brugge 34% Let s take a look back at the most memorable early upsets over the last five years: The biggest match day one shock in that period was in 2012 when Belarussian tournament debutants BATE Borisov beat the French league club Lille 3 1 in the tournament s opening match. Neither team would go on to qualify for the knockout stages though. FC Basel's win at Chelsea on the opening match day a year later was also considered a major upset. But it also had little effect on the final group as Chelsea went on to the last 16 as group winners whereas Basel dropped into the Europa League after finishing third in the group. Interestingly, it turns out that most "giant killers" on day one perform similarly to BATE Borisov and FC Basel and fail to turn their early successes into qualification for the next phase of the tournament. Biggest upset victories on Champions League matchday 1 - last 5 seasons Season Home Result Away ECI chance of upset win 2012/2013 Lille OSC 1-3 BATE Borisov 10% 2013/2014 Chelsea 1-2 FC Basel 11% 2011/2012 Internazionale 0-1 Trabzonspor 13% 2015/2016 Dinamo Zagreb 2-1 Arsenal 16% 2014/2015 Olympiacos 3-2 Atlético Madrid 17% 2012/2013 Sporting Braga 0-2 CFR 1907 Cluj 18% 2015/2016 Valencia CF 2-3 FC Zenit 19%

5 Page 5 C. Must See Matchups The highlight of the first week of Champions League football is the group A clash between French champion Paris Saint-Germain and Premier League runner-up Arsenal on 13 September. This is the first of eight Champions League group phase matches likely to involve two teams from the Euro Club Index's top-10 clubs. A day later, Italian champion Juventus plays last season's Europa League winner Sevilla, a match that just misses this criteria as those clubs ranked fifth and 11 th in Europe respectively. The biggest match-up of the group phase will be Atlético Madrid's two matches against Bayern Munich in September and December. 2016/2017 Champions League group matches involving two of the best 10 European clubs Date Home team ECI rank Away team ECI rank 13 September Paris Saint-Germain (FRA) 6 Arsenal (ENG) September Borussia Dortmund (GER) 8 Real Madrid (ESP) 2 28 September Atlético Madrid (ESP) 4 Bayern Munich (GER) 3 19 October FC Barcelona (ESP) 1 Manchester City (ENG) 7 01 November Manchester City (ENG) 7 FC Barcelona (ESP) 1 23 November Arsenal (ENG 10 Paris Saint-Germain (FRA) 6 06 December Bayern Munich (GER) 3 Atlético Madrid (ESP) 4 07 December Real Madrid (ESP) 2 Borussia Dortmund (GER) 8 Note: This list may change during the season as teams move in and out of the Euro Club Index top-10. Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal have met before in European competition with the English club knocking PSG out of the Cup Winners' Cup in Arsenal went on to beat Italy's Parma that year to win its only European title to date. Arsenal has never lost a European match in France, winning eight times and drawing three times.

6 Page 6 D. Avoid Opening Day Defeat Less than 30% of clubs that lose opening Champions League matches advance to the knockout stage so avoiding defeat on opening day is clearly crucial to a team's chances for success in the tournament. Last season, 13 clubs lost opening fixtures in the competition but only two - Arsenal and Manchester City were able to recover and progress to the competition's knockout phase. Many of those losing an opening match will be teams not expected to qualify. Theoretically, strong teams such as Manchester United and Valencia got off on the wrong foot by losing openers in 2015/2016. Each club failed to score enough points in later matches to advance to the knockout phase. Manchester United's opener last season was at PSV and Louis van Gaal's team never recovered from that 2-1 defeat, eventually finishing third in group B. PSV was able to progress to the knockout phase at United's expense. Spanish club Valencia's failure to advance was a little different. It lost at home to group favorites FC Zenit in the opening match but went on to win its next two. The club then lost its final three matches and group outsider KAA Gent took advantage. Arsenal's progress last season after losing its first match was unusual as the club went on to lose its second fixture too. Arsenal is one of only 10 clubs to have progressed in the competition after losing its first two matches. Another English club, Newcastle United, is also on that short list. But Newcastle also lost its third match and owns the distinction of being the only team to qualify from the group stage after losing the first three fixtures..

7 Page 7 E. Losers and Winners From the Draw Dutch champion PSV is the big loser in the Champions League draw. On the other hand, Tottenham Hotspur is the beneficiary of a better- than-expected draw and is now one of the 16 clubs likely to progress. Prior to the draw, our projections gave PSV a 38% chance of progressing to the knockout phase of the competition. However, former PSV striker Ruud van Nistelrooy drew his old club to play in a group with Bayern Munich and Atlético Madrid, both teams ranked in the current European top-4. Consequently, PSV's chance of making it to the knockout phase has gone down to 14%, the biggest drop for any club in the competition. Borussia Mönchengladbach (down 14%) and Sporting CP (down 13%) also did badly out of this year's Champions League draw. It should be noted that none of those three teams was expected to progress to the knockout phase even before the draw so they have merely transformed from unlikely second round participants to even more unlikely. One team though has been pushed out of the group of 16 favorites to make the knockout phase. Russian champion CSKA Moscow is the 27 th best team in Europe. But theoretically, the club was helped by UEFA's seeding system which ranked them amongst the top teams. Prior to the draw, CSKA was the 14 th most likely team to advance despite 16 clubs in the competition being ranked higher in the Euro Club Index. The draw, however, matched CSKA against the best team from the third pot of seeds, Tottenham Hotspur, effectively meaning the two clubs swapped places. Tottenham is expected to prevail so it is now the more likely of the two to reach the last 16. Premier League champions Leicester City also benefitted from being placed in pot 1 but its draw gave the team even better chances to make it to the last 16. This is because its group contains FC Porto, the lowest ranked team from the pot of second seeds, Club Brugge, the lowest ranked team in pot 3, and FC Copenhagen which was mid-ranked in the bottom draw pot. The draw therefore had little impact on the teams which should reach the knockout phase of the 2016/2017 Champions League. There will be upsets of course and not all of the 16 highest-ranked teams will make it to the second round but the draw has not changed things very much.

8 Page 8 F. Group Phase Top Scorers Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo needs just one goal to become the first player to score 50 times in the Champions League group phase. FC Barcelona's Lionel Messi only trails Ronaldo by two goals. Our analysis shows that while Ronaldo is in the lead in goals scored, Messi is the more efficient goal scorer requiring fewer minutes to score each goal. Lionel Messi is the only player with at least 20 goals in the Champions League group phase to require less than 90 minutes on the field to score. The Argentine scores a goal every 87 minutes that he is on the pitch. The current player closest to this scoring frequency in the group phase is Real Madrid's Karim Benzema who has required 15 minutes more per goal than Messi. Benzema's team-mate and Messi's great rival, Cristiano Ronaldo, needs 115 minutes on the pitch for each of his group phase goals, nearly half an hour per goal more than Messi. Our data also shows that when the pressure mounts, Ronaldo turns up the heat in the knockout phase, putting the ball in the net every 121 minutes of those bigger matches. Lionel Messi has needed seven minutes more than Ronaldo for his Champions League knockout goals. Only Bayern Munich's current striker Robert Lewandowski and Filippo Inzaghi have come close to Ronaldo and Messi in terms of goal scoring efficiency in the knockout phase. Top scorers in Champions League group phase Goals Player Team(s) Mins per goal Matches 49 Cristiano Ronaldo Manchester United (5),Real Madrid (44) Lionel Messi FC Barcelona (47) Karim Benzema Olympique Lyonnais (11),Real Madrid (23) Zlatan Ibrahimovic AC Milan (8),Ajax (1),FC Barcelona (1),Internazionale (6), Juventus (3),Paris Saint-Germain (14) Didier Drogba Chelsea (23),Galatasaray (2),Olympique de Marseille (5) Raúl Real Madrid (28),Schalke 04 (2) Ruud van Nistelrooy Manchester United (13),PSV (5),Real Madrid (11) Alessandro Del Piero Juventus (25) Andri Shevchenko AC Milan (10),Chelsea (2),Dynamo Kyiv (10) Sergio Agüero Atlético Madrid (5),Manchester City (15) Thierry Henry AS Monaco (6),Arsenal (11),FC Barcelona (3) Note: This table refers only to the first group phase and does not include goals scored in the second group phase which was part of the competition from 1999 to 2003.