Who's ready for the last weekend of competitive club soccer until after Christmas?
Anybody? Nobody?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
With the World Cup in Qatar set to kick off a week from Sunday, all of European soccer will go dormant until at least late December, if not later. For the first time ever, the soccer world will get its own bizarro version of an All-Star break: most of the best players will go off and compete in some exotic location, while the rest of the playing population gets some time off.
But what about when everyone comes back? While you still care about the club game, here are 13 questions that will define the rest of the 2022-23 European season.
1. Can Manchester City finally win the Champions League?
It's been the same story for the past half-decade: Pep Guardiola's team are the favorites to win the European Cup before the group stages, then they're even bigger favorites before the knockout rounds ... and then they don't win. Of course, this speaks more to the random nature of knockout soccer rather than some kind of inherent flaw to the way City's teams have been built or coached. Per FiveThirtyEight, they're the favorites -- and there's still a 75% chance that a team other than City wins it all.
However, if we just say that City have been 1-in-4 favorites for each of the past five tournaments, then there's only a 24% chance that City don't win the tournament at least once over that stretch. The field is favored over a City win every season, but turning a half-decade of pure dominance into zero Champions League trophies is even more unlikely.
2. Will Erling Haaland keep it up?
Through 13 Premier League games, the 22-year-old City striker has scored 18 goals. Last season, two players scored more than 18 goals ... IN THE ENTIRE FREAKING PREMIER LEAGUE SEASON. The goals record across a 38-game season is the 32 scored by Liverpool's Mohamed Salah in 2017-18. Per the Sporting Index betting market, Haaland's over-under for this season is 40.
Put another way, the average outcome for the rest of Haaland's season is that he breaks the goal-scoring record by eight goals. Did I mention that he's only 22?
3. Will Barcelona finally cross the finish line?
Their summer was a complete disaster -- and so was their Champions League campaign. But despite selling off their future and crashing out to Inter Milan at home, Barcelona are completely dominating LaLiga. They have a two-point lead on Real Madrid and they have the best attack, best defense, best final-third possession rate and best press in LaLiga. They've been better than everyone in Spain at almost every aspect of the game that matters.
Can they hold off Madrid for their first title since 2019? FiveThirtyEight gives it a 66% chance of happening.
4. Can someone in Germany catch Bayern Munich?
Although the 10-time champs only have a four-point lead in the table, the table is lying to all of us. Julian Nagelsmann & Co. have produced a plus-34 goal differential through their first 14 matches despite, you know, letting perhaps the best striker in the world (Robert Lewandowski) leave for Barcelona over the summer. No one else in Germany has a goal differential better than plus-8.
This league hasn't been competitive in a long time, and it won't be this season, either.
5. Might someone in France run down Paris Saint-Germain?
Nope! FiveThirtyEight projects PSG to finish 21 points ahead of second place.
6. Will Lionel Messi be around to celebrate?
After the first "disappointing" individual season of his career, Messi has been -- for my money -- the best player in the world over the first few months of this season. He is, of course, 35 years old, and we have never seen a player of his age sustain this level of dominance over a full season. He's once again scoring, creating and facilitating at elite rates, all at once.
Messi is as locked in as he's ever been, with his last shot at the only trophy he hasn't won just over a week away. But what happens once the World Cup is over? Messi himself doesn't seem so sure: "After this World Cup, we will see what could happen with my career."
The resolution to that uncertainty won't totally shift the balance of power in European soccer in a way it would have, say, five years ago, but it still has plenty of implications for who wins the Champions League, LaLiga and maybe even MLS Cup.
7. Can Cristiano Ronaldo keep up the charade in Manchester?
Look, it's just not working. At 37 years old, Ronaldo either can't or doesn't want to find a way to contribute to a team with Manchester United's aspirations, both competitively and tactically. They've looked mostly awful in the matches he has played, and he's no longer able to conjure up goals through sheer force of will in order to make up for all the dis-cohesion his presence in the team creates.
It seems best for everyone that he moves on, but, well, he is 37 years old, is one of the highest-paid players in the world, and seems increasingly removed from being a winning player for the handful of teams who can afford him. Will the World Cup feature the final high-stakes soccer game we ever see Ronaldo play?
8. How 'bout Napoli?
This question has multiple meanings. Rumors have connected Ronaldo with Napoli since the summer, but Luciano Spalletti has his team looking like one of the five or 10 best teams in the world so far this season. There's really no place for Ronaldo on such a dynamic, energetic side; they simply don't need him.
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Napoli have dropped four points from their first 14 Serie A matches, and they dominated a Champions League group that included Liverpool and Ajax. It's no fluke, either; per Stats Perform, they have the fourth-best expected-goal differential in Europe this season -- behind only Bayern, Barcelona, and Manchester City.
Per FiveThirtyEight, they're at 69% to win Serie A, and they nabbed a cushy Champions League draw against Eintracht Frankfurt in the round of 16. With two of Liverpool, Bayern Munich, PSG and Real Madrid guaranteed to be eliminated before the quarterfinals, their path to a deep Champions League run is as open as it'll ever be.
9. Why did you wait this long to mention Arsenal?
Here's how the betting markets see the Premier League season playing out, using the over-under number from Sporting Index as the projected points total:
1. Manchester City: 91 points
2. Arsenal: 82
3. Liverpool: 71
4. Tottenham: 68
T-5. Chelsea and Manchester United: 67
7. Newcastle: 66
For a team that's currently in first by two points, finishing nine points back might be a disappointing outcome. For a team that hasn't qualified for the Champions League since 2015, a comfortable second-place finish is a massive success.
With Gabriel Jesus up top and William Saliba at the back, both of them added to a young and improving core, the Gunners look like they're back among the best teams in the world. But as we've seen over the past five years, simply being one of the best teams in the world has rarely been enough to compete with the actual best team in the world over a 38-game season.
10. Can Liverpool get it together?
Based on the above projections above, the market is still clinging to Liverpool's past performance, the one where they almost won the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup in the same season. They're projected to win 52 points over the remainder of the season -- behind City's haul of 59 points, but ahead of Arsenal on 48. In other words, the people who consistently make money on the outcome of soccer games still see Liverpool as the second-best team in the Premier League.
Well, uh ... they only have the eighth-most points, the fifth-most goals, and the seventh-fewest goals allowed this season, and it's not like they've been lighting the house on fire and just getting unlucky: Their per-game xG differential is just the sixth best in the league so far. But all that ignores the fact that Liverpool took 15 out of 18 points in the CL group stages -- only Bayern had more -- and that they put up a plus-5.5 xG differential (behind only City, Napoli, Bayern, and Real Madrid) over those six matches. They've been one of the best teams in the Champions League and an above-average team in the Premier League.
Throw that all together and the squad's baseline looks much better than their standing in the domestic table. Then add in all of the injuries -- only two outfield players, Virgil van Dijk and Mohamed Salah, have played at least 80% of the available league minutes -- and you can start to see a world where this team goes on a run in the second half of the season.
11. Will Jude Bellingham stay put?
The estimated player valuations from Transfermarkt currently peg eight players as having a value of at least €100 million:
1. Erling Haaland, Manchester City: €170 million
2. Kylian Mbappe, PSG: €160 million
3. Vinicius Junior, Real Madrid: €120 million
4. Phil Foden, Manchester City: €110 million
After that, another four are all listed at €100 million: Pedri of Barcelona, Jamal Musiala of Bayern, Federico Valverde of Real Madrid, and Jude Bellingham of Borussia Dortmund. Seven of these players play for one of the richest clubs in the world, and then there's Bellingham. He's the only one -- barring more Mbappe drama -- who seems likely to leave his current club any time soon.
Bellingham is all but assured to become the next true superstar to hit the market, so where does he go?
Well, Bellingham-to-Liverpool seems like it's been one of soccer's worst-kept secrets over the past year or so. He idolized Steven Gerrard growing up, he has a great relationship with current captain Jordan Henderson, he plays for the club where Liverpool's current manager, Jurgen Klopp, became a legend and he just fits the team and style like a glove.
The one thing Liverpool seemed to lack last season was a rangy third midfielder who could cover the ground behind Salah and fullback Trent Alexander-Arnold while also making runs forward to score goals, create chances, and unsettle a defense. (Henderson was capable of the former, but frequently looked uncomfortable whenever he ran in behind the defense.) They lacked that player because there are maybe three or four of those players in the entire world who can do it, so the fit for Bellingham -- who's not a holding midfielder, not an attacking midfielder, and not a tempo-setter, but somewhere in between all three -- seemed close-to-perfect.
ESPN has reported that Liverpool still are the leaders in the so-called "chase for his signature", but they're now in real danger of missing out on the Champions League next season. Plus, they seem to have a gaping hole in their midfield that needs to be filled ASAP. To get Bellingham, the typically meticulous and analytical Liverpool will likely need to pay way more than they've ever paid for a transfer -- especially if they try to get a deal done in the January transfer window. They could wait it out, but the longer you wait, the more soccer games happen, the more things change and the more other teams can slide into the picture.
Normally, I'd bet on Liverpool being patient, potentially letting someone else spend big and then finding a similarly effective player for a much smaller fee, but with the reports of the team being up for sale, and the potential revenue hit from missing the Champions League, it seems like Liverpool are more likely to spend big on a single player than ever before.
12. What's next for Newcastle?
No one expected it to go this well, this quickly. Through 14 matches, Newcastle are in third place -- and it's not a fluke. They also have the third-best goal differential and xG differential in the league.
Since the summer of 2021, Newcastle have produced a net spend -- transfer fees received, minus paid -- of minus-€264.6 million. Only Manchester United have spent more, and that's despite the fact that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund didn't take over the team until midway through last season. The PIF wasn't around to spend in the summer of 2021, but they've still spent more than everyone other than United over a span that includes a full window that the new ownership wasn't a part of.
They've also spent their money in a way unlike the previous nation-state/oligarch takeovers across European soccer. In other words, they have not signed any big-name superstars. They broke the club-record with the €70 million paid for Alexander Isak, a raw but promising 22-year-old Swedish striker. And then the deals for Bruno Guimaraes (€42m), Sven Botman (€37m) and Chris Wood (€30m) all fit in the top five of club-record fees, but none of the other moves make it into the top 15 of most expensive deals in club history. They've spent a ton of money, but they've mainly spent on young talent or established but unspectacular Premier League players -- a strategy designed to raise their long-term ceiling, but also their short-term floor.
Among their 11 most-used players this season, however, just five were brought in after the PIF's takeover. Despite a mixed track record while at Bournemouth, manager Eddie Howe has this collection of players performing at a higher level than anyone could've expected. Still, that combination doesn't seem like it should be enough to turn Newcastle into one of the best teams in the league this early, and those betting-market projections do expect them to cool off a good bit over the rest of the season. They've certainly been aided by a lack of midweek European games, too.
But, man. Despite not splashing for a superstar or totally overhauling the starting XI, Newcastle are already legit challengers for a Champions League place. Given that the club now have more spending power than any sports team on planet Earth, that's a scary thought for everyone else in England, and in Europe.
13. Will any of this matter?
Normally, for me, following a typical European season is like shining a light into the darkness and slowly widening the aperture. Each game provides more information about the quality and composition of a given squad. Patterns and particularities begin to emerge, and with each passing week, you become more and more confident that certain teams like to play certain ways and certain teams will produce a certain quality of performance.
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Fourteen or 15 games usually widens the flashlight far enough that you can see and trust in each team's underlying fundamentals. This season, though, I'm doubtful that it will. For starters, the top teams all just played an unprecedented number of matches in a span of 2½ months, so it seems reasonable to expect that a lot of them produced, on aggregate, worse performances than they normally would, because of a combination of fatigue and squad rotation.
Next, there's the, uh, whole World Cup thing. Most of the best players in Europe's Big Five leagues will be going off to play soccer with different coaches and different players for a month. Some of them are going to get hurt. Some of them are going to be physically tired. Some will be mentally exhausted. And others might find something that works in Qatar and carry it back to their club.
On the flip side, most of the players in the Big Five leagues won't be playing at the World Cup. They'll all be able to rest and actually practice and train in a specific and directed way that's not possible during the grind of a season. You would think that would help, but what about the players who are playing well right now? Does Miguel Almiron want to take a breather while he's in the form of his life for Newcastle?
It's also hard to see how this will be a positive for a club like Arsenal, who are rolling and tearing off dominant performances, week after week. Given how much they've exceeded preseason expectations, should we really expect them just to pick up where they left off after the entire team takes a month and a half off from playing? That's just not how this works.
The Qatar World Cup is a humanitarian disgrace. It was awarded by a bunch of corrupt executives, and it's going to corrupt the competitive integrity of the club season. But if you want a reason to look forward to the soccer that'll come after it: We really have no idea what's gonna happen.