The European cups are back and the Champions League could surprise us

Arsenal and Barcelona, ​​the best teams in the English and Spanish leagues, are already out. The other big ones struggle. And if it were the year of Napoli?

If by all accounts this is it an abnormal season, why should the Champions League be an exception? For example: in a year in which two of the three best teams in Europe – Arsenal and Barcelona, ​​dominators of their respective leagues – will play the Europa League, why couldn’t the third lift the Cup, namely Luciano Spalletti’s super-Napoli? Like the World Cup, every time the Champions League challenges the natural breath of novelty that blows throughout the European movement, and always wins: the last ten cups have been lifted by teams that had already triumphed in the past, and the only “before time” from 1998 to today is that of Chelsea (2012). Despite the ten-figure expenses, Paris Saint-Germain is still waiting as well as City, overwhelmed by a judicial storm whose proportions are still hard to perceive. Own the Guardiola band – lingered in the Premier League and crossed by doubts even about the difficulties of integrating the giant Haaland (31 goals this season) into the high-precision device refined over the years by the watchmaker Pep – is the big favourite according to the bookmakers, above all because it is expected from an apparently easy eighth against Leipzig, while the other direct opponents, from Bayern to PSG, from Liverpool to Real Madrid are destined to happily butcher each other.