The first week of the newly redesigned Champions League was never going to be anything legendary; even though each of the top 15 teams in Opta's power rankings are all in the Champions League field, there were only three matches between teams among those 15. This was set up to be like the beginning of domestic league play: We'll sing the Champions League anthem (or at least the "THE CHAMMMMPIONNNNNS" part at the end), we'll celebrate the competition's return and we'll worry about the big matches later.
The final shift of matches on Thursday -- with actual down-to-the-wire wins and fun crowds at Atletico Madrid and Brest and a delightfully weird Monaco-Barcelona match -- was awfully fun, however. And with 18 matches in a short amount of time, there's always going to be a lot to keep track of. We'll always see star turns and plot twists.
There are basically four tiers of Champions League teams: the obvious favorites, the teams very likely to advance to the knockout rounds (and hoping for a run beyond that), the teams just hoping to maybe make the round of 16 and the extreme long shots. That 21 of the 36 teams are in the latter two categories tells you this isn't the most balanced competition in the world, but there are still loads of storylines to follow.
After each of the eight matchdays in the group stage -- sorry, it's the "league phase" now -- we'll look at the best players and matches of the week, as well as what's happening in terms of stock up/stock down within each tier.
