In soccer, the best predictions are typically also the most boring ones. The clubs with the most money have the best players, and the teams with the best players do the best over the course of a long league season. The most likely league champions in Europe's biggest leagues, per your sportsbook or soccer rating of choice? Probably Manchester City (the winner of six of the past seven Premier League titles), Bayern Munich (11 of 12 Bundesliga titles), Real Madrid (three of five LaLiga titles and five of nine Champions Leagues), Paris Saint-Germain (10 of 12 Ligue 1 titles) and Inter Milan (two of four Serie A titles and two of three Coppa Italias). What fun is there in predicting any of those teams?
It's a lot more fun to take tiny morsels of interesting information and run with them. Granted, even that can lead us to picking favorites sometimes -- what part of "Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool win their first six matches by a combined 14-1" leads you to believe anyone else has even a sliver of a shot of cracking the top three in England, for instance? But even in the Premier League, we've seen some early surprises through two matchdays.
For each of the past two years, I've shared a set of early-season August overreactions. As you would expect, that results in quite a few misses of the "Valencia and Brighton will make the Champions League" variety. But other times, the opening hours of the season really can give you a glimpse into something real, "Bayer Leverkusen will win the Bundesliga in 2023-24" or "Jude Bellingham will lead Real Madrid in scoring (despite being a midfielder)," for instance, or "Union Berlin will make the Champions League."
Acknowledging that we're going to whiff pretty badly on a few of these, it's time to take some swings!
