2024 Champions League predictions, odds: Atletico Madrid, Aston Villa are long-shot picks

The 2024-25 UEFA Champions League is going to be an adventure for us all.

After years of tinkering ith ideas to revitalize the competition, UEFA has adopted a new format that will see the 36 participating clubs compete in a new league phase (former group stage).

Each club will play eight different opponents, playing half of those matches at home and half of them away.

From there, the teams ranked first through eighth in the league phase will automatically advance to the Round of 16 where they will await the winners a two-legged knock-out phase play-off between the clubs that finish between ninth and 24th.

This all gets underway on Sept. 17.

2024-25 Champions League predictions

It may be a new format, but Manchester City is still the clear betting favorite to win the Champions League at +280 odds at FanDuel.

The Cityzens, who won the tournament in 2023, are joined by defending champions Real Madrid (+350) at the top of the board.

Arsenal (+700), Barcelona (+1000) and Bayern Munich (+1000) make up the rest of the top five. While history tells us that one of the favorites will likely win the Champions League, this is a new era and should be ripe for some chaos.

And don’t forget that the last two runners up (Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan) were both long shots before the tournament started.

With that in mind, here are a couple of sleepers worth a sprinkle before we get underway:

Atletico Madrid to win the Champions League (+3000, Caesars)

Known for its prowess in European competition, Atletico Madrid come into the new campaign with raised expectations thanks to some reinforcements in the transfer market.

Julian Alvarez, Conor Gallagher, Alexander Sorloth and Robin Le Normand should add more punch to a lineup that already had plenty of potential and manager Diego Simeone is a master at getting the most from his charges.

The other important thing to note with Atletico is that its draw in the league phase is quite manageable with a road match against PSG looking like the toughest date on the docket.

Home matches against Leipzig and Leverkusen will be stern tests, but there’s not much else that’s daunting for Los Colchoneros.

Aston Villa to win the Champions League (100/1, BetMGM)

Although they’re clearly the fourth-best team from England in this competition, there’s plenty to like about Aston Villa’s upside in this tournament.

First and foremost, Unai Emery is a fantastic tournament manager and orchestrated one of the most memorable recent runs by a long shot when he took Villareal to the semifinals in 2022.

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This is Emery’s 17th consecutive season managing in a European competition and he took this Villa side to the semifinals of the 2023-24 UEFA Conference League last spring, so they have plenty of experience playing in Europe.

Villa does have a couple of heavyweights on its schedule, but it get its two toughest opponents (Bayern Munich, Juventus) at home and outside of a trip to Leipzig everything else looks manageable for a very talented roster playing for a manager who has won the Europa League three times.