You have to break the soccer season into chunks. It's so long, and you don't want to be stuck saying, "Is this the week Liverpool lock up the Premier League title yet?" for months on end. (They haven't locked up the title yet, but it's going to happen.) Even if the big picture doesn't change all that much, it's worth it to occasionally step back, survey the landscape and see what's changed.
We're two months into 2025, in the process of completing what is essentially the third quarter of the season. The rubber is hitting the road in the Champions League, where the first leg of the round of 16 was completed on Wednesday. That indeed signifies the homestretch of the season, but we should indeed step back for a moment and take stock.
Which teams and players have owned 2025? Who has cooled off down the stretch? Who's hot, and who's not?
ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE
On Jan. 1, Premier League leader Liverpool led Arsenal by a relatively comfortable margin (six points with a game in hand), while a mix of haves (Chelsea, Manchester City, Newcastle) and upstarts (Nottingham Forest, AFC Bournemouth) jockeyed for the remaining top spots. Today, it's pretty much the same story. Liverpool now lead by 13 points, Arsenal are still second, and the same teams (plus Brighton, and maybe Fulham and Aston Villa) are positioning themselves for Champions League qualification.
Liverpool have been the best team in the league in 2025, just as they were in the waning months of 2024, but you can make a case that the second-best team in the new year has been ... Crystal Palace?
Hot: Crystal Palace
This is a chart comparing teams' recent performance levels (using adjusted goal differential, a mix of 70% xG differential and 30% goal differential, which Ryan O'Hanlon has discussed quite a bit) to the quality of opponent they've faced in this period (using the average Opta power ratings of opponents). It quickly shows the teams that are standing out for good or bad reasons. The best place to be on the chart is above the trend line -- meaning whatever you've done is better than expected given the competition you've faced -- and as far to the right as possible.
Crystal Palace are below the trend line -- an iffy set of opponents has certainly helped their cause -- but for a team that was in 19th place as late as Nov. 29 (and haven't finished higher than 10th in the top division since 1991), their current level of play is incredible. And since New Year's Day, they've produced the second-best xG differential in the Premier League and have tied for the second-best points-per-game average.
Since a 2-0 loss to Fulham on Nov. 9, Oliver Glasner's squad has lost just three of its past 16 league encounters. The improvement came too late to matter in the Premier League, where they're still 12th, but they have a good shot at a rare finish in the top half of the table, and Saturday's win over Millwall advanced them to the FA Cup quarterfinals.
Palace have allowed just six league goals (the fewest) from shots worth 7.2 xG (second lowest) in 2025, and they've attempted 20 shots worth at least 0.2 xG (fourth most) while allowing just five (fewest). They're dominating in the set-piece department, and despite often being happy to bunker in and counterattack, they've also scored 11 goals from them (third) while allowing just three (fewest). Ismaïla Sarr flicking in through-balls, often to Jean-Philippe Mateta (eight goals in his past eight Premier League matches), is proving to be a prolific strategy.
What a turnaround this has been.
Not: Southampton
I guess you knew that: They have nine points in 27 Premier League matches and will comfortably be the first team to clinch relegation. Against a below-average set of Premier League opponents since the start of 2025, though, they've beaten Ipswich (a somewhat lucky result accompanied by a -0.9 xG differential), but lost seven other league matches by a combined 25-5. They're far beyond toast at this point.
Hot: Wolverhampton Wanderers, sort of?
Wolves' 2024-25 schedule was ridiculously front-loaded. Within their first eight matches of the season, they had played all four of England's Champions League qualifiers from the year before (Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Aston Villa), plus Chelsea, Newcastle and what has turned out to be the surprise team of the season, Nottingham Forest. They took one point from those eight matches.
Then, when the second half of the season began, they saw basically the same opponents in a similar order, and they've taken just six points from eight 2025 foes. They are therefore stuck in 17th place overall, just five points above the relegation zone.
They're also probably fine. Of their 11 remaining opponents, only two are in the top half of the table. Their xG differential since the start of the year is more midtable than relegation-worthy, and now the schedule eases up. They aren't hot, but we might think they are in a few weeks.
Not: Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur
Once again, this isn't news. Spurs and United are 13th and 14th, respectively, in the Premier League table. Spurs have battled winless runs of five straight (in November/December) and seven in eight (in December/January), and United fired their manager in October. Their collective mediocrity has been one of the defining narratives of the season.
Mark Ogden explains the problems Man United will face if they fail to qualify for Europe next season.
The signs of hope are faint. Spurs won three straight league matches recently, and have actually won seven of 14 in all competitions in 2025. But only one win came against a team in the upper half of the Premier League table, and the difference between their current 2025 goal differential (+4 in all competitions) and xG differential (-7.9) is massive and hints at a pretty lucky run. You could say that good xG fortune has just offset poor injury fortune; either way, things still don't look amazing.
Meanwhile, it was telling that Manchester United's loss on Sunday to Fulham in the FA Cup was actually somewhat encouraging. Against a team further up the table, they generated better opportunities over 120 minutes but drew 1-1 and lost on penalties. They've won six matches in 2025, but most were in cup play and/or against inferior opponents -- a 1-0 win at Fulham on Jan. 26 is their best win -- and like Spurs, their goal differential this year (+3) is quite a bit higher than their xG differential (-2.2).
Both of these teams have produced better results than their underlying numbers suggest they should have, and both are putting all their eggs in the "desperately hope to make a run in the Europa League" basket -- Spurs visit AZ Alkmaar on Thursday in the round of 16, while United visit an out-of-form Real Sociedad. Any sign of momentum is nice, but they aren't giving us much to work with.
Hot: Mohamed Salah, Liverpool
Again, you knew that. Let's go with a couple of deeper cuts.
Hot: Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa, Brentford
Brentford have been their typical average self in 2025 -- they're 11th in the Premier League, ninth since Jan. 1 -- and a glitchy defense is preventing the Bees from making a serious run at a European place. (They're five points out of seventh.) But the attack remains worthy of continental play. They've scored 22 goals in 12 matches in 2025, and Mbeumo and Wissa have combined for nine of them.
I've found that combining a player's xG (the estimated value of their shot attempts) with their xPVA (the expected value contribution of basically all on-ball actions) can create a pretty fun measure of danger creation, and using it here tells us that Mbeumo and Wissa have been among the league's most dangerous attackers since Jan. 1.
That Salah ranks first is a sign that you know this is a decent measure of attacking quality. Mbeumo and Wissa ranking ahead of players like Alexander Isak and Erling Haaland, however, is eye popping. And only some iffy finishing from Wissa -- he's scored four goals from shots worth 6.4 xG -- has prevented this duo from being even more prolific.
Wissa has attempted the most shots in the league in 2025 (32) and put the most shots on target (15), while Mbeumo, an analytics darling for quite a while, leads the league in xPVA (+2.71) and is 10th in progressive carries (72), a category typically dominated by center-backs.
Not: Anthony Gordon, Newcastle
Gordon was last seen picking up a very silly red card late in Newcastle's FA Cup loss to Brighton, and you almost can't blame him for being a bit on edge. In the 2024 portion of the Premier League season, he ranked third in overall xPVA (+4.4), having created constant danger in terms of both facilitation (fourth in chances created, 13th in assists) and forcing the issue (third in fouls drawn, ninth in successful 1v1s in the box).
Gordon was eighth in the league in xG+xPVA before Jan. 1; he's 29th since. He's still drawing contact and forcing the issue, but he has just one assist (40th) and eight chances created (52nd). Newcastle, meanwhile, have lost three of their past four, including defeats to Liverpool and Manchester City by a combined 6-0. They're still just two points out of the top five and a likely Champions League bid, but the defense is increasingly leaky, and a rebound from Gordon would be incredibly welcome.
SPANISH LALIGA
The Premier League has quite a few upstarts muddying the water at the moment. LaLiga is far more straightforward. The five best teams in the league in 2025 ... are the five teams that were best before 2025.
Form has flipped the order of those teams around a few times, but Barcelona, Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid are separated by three points at the top, Athletic Club leads Villarreal by four points in fourth -- Villarreal has a game in hand -- and everyone else is some distance back.
The best teams have remained the best in 2025, but some of Spain's other aspirational teams have struggled mightily in the new year. We saw one of them get utterly pummeled on Sunday in Barcelona.
Hot: Barcelona
Not: Real Sociedad
We'll just go ahead and combine these two. It will make sense for anyone who watched Barca's 4-0 thrashing of Real Sociedad on Sunday.
Shots: Barcelona 33, Villarreal 0. Zero!
Barcelona easily have the best adjusted goal differential in the league in 2025, and while part of the reason for that is an easy schedule -- they haven't played any of the current top six in the second half of the season, while Real Madrid have played two teams and Atletico have played three -- Sunday gave us an emphatic reminder of their upside, too.
Barca have scored 20 goals in seven matches in 2025, and no one else has scored more than 15 in eight. Their goal differential this year is +20, and no one else is above +9. And better yet -- for anyone who isn't actually a Barca fan, anyway -- their relentless attacking style, with a high defensive line that they keep deploying even late in a match they lead, is both incredibly watchable and occasionally disastrous (in an equally watchable way).
We'll see if the random glitches prevent them from winning the league title; but when they're on, they're absurd. And they've been on for much of 2025.
Real Sociedad, not so much. La Real have lost five of their past seven league matches, three by at least three goals; on Jan. 18, they were two points out of fifth place. Now they're 10 back. The main issue: They can't create quality opportunities of any kind. Granted, their zero-shot performance against Barcelona was an outlier, but they're still 14th in the league in shots per possession for the season and 18th since Jan. 1.
Defense has cratered in the new year, too. They looked great against Midtjylland in the last round of the Europa League knockouts, but their odds of playing in Europe next season are slipping.
Hot: Kylian Mbappé, Real Madrid
After averaging about 0.8 goals per appearance at PSG, Mbappe got off to a slow start at Real Madrid, scoring in his debut, but registering just nine goals in his next 19 matches. His difficulties were a major story of the early season as he struggled to build chemistry with Vinícius Júnior and others.
It was safe to assume that he would figure things out at some point, and 17 goals in his past 19 appearances certainly suggest things are clicking. In terms of danger creation, he's been the best LaLiga attacker of 2025.
Real Madrid have wobbled of late, playing well in the Champions League but pulling just five points from their past five matches. Jude Bellingham is fighting a finishing slump (and needs to watch his word choice with officials), and Vinicius only has one league goal in 2025 too. And there's also the whole "the defense has been wrecked by injury" thing. But the first mission on the list was to get Mbappé going. Check.
(Also: It's absolutely beautiful that 32-year-old Isco is third on the list above, ahead of Bellingham and behind only two torrid strikers, Mbappé and Atleti's Julián Álvarez. He just keeps producing for Real Betis, and his brilliance -- a penalty goal and one assist from six chances created -- was a major reason why Betis beat Real Madrid last Saturday.)
GERMAN BUNDESLIGA
Bayern Munich suffered a really mediocre week in February with a lot of people watching: The German giants were dominated in a fortunate 0-0 draw at Bayer Leverkusen, then had to save themselves late against Celtic to advance in the Champions League. If that's when you paid the most attention to Vincent Kompany's squad, you didn't come away particularly impressed.
In nearly every other match of 2025, however, including Wednesday's 3-0 throttling of Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League round of 16, Bayern have been brilliant.
Unlike the Premier League chart above, there's no correlation between performance and opponent quality in the Bundesliga at the moment: the good teams have been good, and the bad teams have been bad no matter who they've played. And Bayern have easily been the best of the best.
Hot: Bayern Munich
No one in Europe's top four leagues has a higher adjusted goal differential in 2025 than Bayern (+2.03): even PSG, running rampant through Ligue 1 at the moment, are at only +1.72. There have been some strange results in the Champions League, but they're in excellent shape overall. And they're getting contributions from a wide array of players.
Before combining for a hat trick against Leverkusen on Wednesday, Harry Kane and Jamal Musiala had combined for only seven nonpenalty goals in all competitions in 2025. The club's depth on the wings has paid off, though -- Michael Olise, Leroy Sané, Kingsley Coman and Serge Gnabry have combined for 12 goals and seven assists -- and defender Dayot Upamecano is in brilliant form, leading a defense that has allowed just three goals in its past six matches.
Jürgen Klinsmann reacts to Bayern Munich's 3-0 win vs. Bayer Leverkusen in the first leg of the round of 16.
Not: RB Leipzig
Borussia Dortmund have taken most of the heat for mediocrity in the Bundesliga, but they can at least point to poor fortune: Their xG differential ranks third for the season, suggesting they've suffered some bad breaks to currently stand in 10th.
RB Leipzig, however, are almost exactly where they belong. For the season, they're seventh in goal differential and 10th in xG differential: Tthey're a bit lucky to stand in sixth, especially considering they've won only once in their past eight league matches. Combined with a dire performance in the Champions League (they won just one of eight matches and finished 32nd out of 36 teams), this has been a mostly wasted season for Marco Rose & Co., with redemption coming only via a trip to the DFB-Pokal semifinals. They're only three points out of a Champions League spot and have the talent to click into gear at any moment, but they haven't looked the part for much of the past five months.
Hot: Mainz
Mainz is pretty, like quite a few cities on the Rhine. It's a university city, and it absolutely throws itself into Carnival (and wine). It's pretty close to the Black Forest, too. There's lots to like. But the football team doesn't exactly have a noteworthy history beyond giving Jürgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel early coaching opportunities.
However, next season they might be playing in the Champions League.
Bo Henriksen's squad came back to beat RB Leipzig 2-1 away on Saturday to maintain their grip on fourth place, and as you see in the chart above, they're playing like a top-four-or-so team as well. They mostly deploy a typical underdog recipe -- extreme effort and excellent defense -- and they must still play five of the league's current top eight (plus Borussia Dortmund), but Opta gives them a 40.2% chance of a top-four finish. This could happen.
Not (by his standards, anyway): Jamal Musiala, Bayern Munich
The list of 2025's best Bundesliga performers is a familiar one. Borussia Dortmund's Serhou Guirassy and Bayern's Harry Kane are second and third in xG+xPVA, trailing only Eintracht Frankfurt's Hugo Ekitike, who has done his best to make up for the loss of Manchester City-bound Omar Marmoush. Stuttgart's Deniz Undav is fifth, Bayer Leverkusen's Florian Wirtz is sixth, Bayern's Michael Olise is seventh ... this all makes sense.
Jamal Musiala, however, is nowhere to be found.
The 22-year-old star is still trying to get going in 2025. In 1,607 minutes in the 2024 portion of 2024-25, Musiala scored 14 goals in all competitions with five assists from 43 chances created. In 832 minutes in 2025, he has two goals and no assists from 23 chances. Musiala and Kane have both struggled (by their standards) to get involved as Bayern have had far more success creating danger from the outside.
It's hard to imagine this will last, but it's an issue until it isn't.
ITALIAN SERIE A
England and Germany might be just about ready to crown champions, but as with LaLiga, Serie A's title race is only getting started. Inter Milan lead Napoli by just one point and Atalanta by three, and Napoli have a particularly easy remaining schedule. Meanwhile, two of Italy's hotter teams lurk as midtable spoilers.
Hot (in different ways): Napoli and Roma
Again, it's good to be above the trend line and far to the right in the chart above. Napoli are pretty far to the right and far above the trend line. Antonio Conte's squad is unbeaten in its past six league matches and was unlucky to merely draw with Inter on Saturday (xG differential: +1.5). That deprived them of a chance to top the table, but considering they've played a far tougher second-half slate than the other primary Scudetto contenders -- their toughest remaining matches are against sixth-place Bologna and ninth-place AC Milan -- they're still in excellent shape.
The stats and advanced stats don't line up at all for Napoli at the moment: They've attempted shots worth 10.8 xG in nine league matches this year (ninth in the league), but they've scored 16 goals (third); meanwhile, they've allowed shots worth only 5.9 xG (first) but have allowed 10 goals (seventh). Regardless, they've produced stellar results against a top-heavy slate. Their attack has slowed a bit since losing Khvicha Kvaratskhelia to PSG on Jan. 17, but seven different players have scored in league play since then, and four have delivered at least one assist.
We'll see if this decentralized attack can continue to produce. But it will be attempting to score mostly on teams in the bottom half of the table.
Roma are in no way involved in the title race, and for the stellar results that they've produced in 2025, you can see from the chart above that they've done most of their damage against Serie A's lesser teams. But for a team that's already fired two different managers this season -- Daniele De Rossi in September, Ivan Juric in November -- they have sure looked cohesive and dangerous of late. They've gone unbeaten in 11 straight Serie A matches, beating Lazio and drawing with Napoli in the process, and they took down Porto to advance to the Europa League round of 16.
The Giallorossi are now within four points of the top six, and if they can top Athletic Club in the Europa League round of 16, they'll become one of the primary favorites in that competition.
This team was too talented to have fallen into 15th place in early December as they did, but it's still a delightful turnaround tale, made even more so by the fact that it's being led by Claudio Ranieri. Now in his third stint with the club, the 73-year-old has pressed mostly the right buttons since arriving on Nov. 14.
Roma force the issue with 1-on-1s and selective pressing, and the right-sided combination of Alexis Saelemaekers and Paulo Dybala have combined for 12 goals and seven assists in all competitions since Ranieri took over. New addition Artem Dovbyk (eight goals and three assists in the same span) has begun to look more comfortable too.
Evidently, it sometimes takes a familiar old hand to steady a ship.
Hot (sort of): Como
Speaking of old hands, Como acquired as many of them as possible heading into their first Serie A season in more than 20 years. Nineteen players have recorded more than 500 minutes in all competitions this season, and nine are at least 28 years old, including 42-year-old goalkeeper Pepe Reina and 33-year-old defensive midfielder Sergi Roberto. But they haven't played primary roles in Como's recent revival -- instead, manager Cesc Fabregas has leaned on a mix of young (winger Assane Diao, midfielder Lucas Da Cunha) and not-quite-as-old (winger Gabriel Strefezza, center-back Edoardo Goldaniga) to turn Como's season around.
Despite a Wolves-esque front-loaded schedule that has fed them nine straight matches against teams in the top half of the table, Como have beaten three of them (Napoli, Fiorentina and Udinese) to climb to a comfortable 13th in the table. They won only two of their first 15 Serie A matches, but have played at a midtable level since. And now this confident squad will face mostly bottom-half competition from here.
Hot (but should be hotter): Florian Thauvin, Udinese
Florian Thauvin has bounced from France to England to Mexico to Italy over the last decade, and while a stint with Tigres didn't produce much, he's slowly discovered a late prime with Udinese. And since Jan. 1, only Inter's stalwart Lautaro Martínez has created more danger in attack than the 32-year-old.
He's created 19 chances in this span (tied for second in the league behind only Lazio's Mattia Zaccagni) with 2.3 expected assists (first), meaning he's been pretty unlucky to have zero assists. He's also first in xPVA created (2.2), second in 1-on-1s (39) and 10th in progressive carries (79). He's forcing the issue, and it's working for Udinese. Sturdy defense and a Thauvin-driven attack have led them to 1.67 points per game in 2025, tied for sixth-best in the league.
They're not serious threats for European qualification, but they're playing like a Europe-level team at the moment, and Thauvin is a major reason why.