AC Milan have virtually already booked their place in the knockout stages of the Champions League, with only one thing left to be resolved.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport report, Juventus (with one game to spare) and Milan (with two) are 99.9% already qualified for the Champions League play-offs. The Bianconeri have no chance of getting into the top eight, the Rossoneri still have the potential by winning their last two games.
Absurdly, both still have a possibility – albeit very remote – of exiting the competition, but it would take both teams losing their remaining fixtures with quite a large goal swing.
In addition to this, a combination of results would be needed: Real Madrid, Feyenoord, Celtic and Sporting CP would have to get six points in the last 180 minutes, Stuttgart and PSV would have to win on the last day and, at the same time, Manchester City would have to win in Paris and draw with Club Brugge.
Dinamo Zagreb, in addition to beating the Rossoneri, would have to win at Arsenal tonight. At that point, Thiago Motta and Sergio Conceiçao’s teams would find themselves tied with Brugge and Manchester City on 12 points, but would be behind in the standings on goal difference with a seven and six-goal swing respectively.
One would be 24th and qualified and the other 25th and eliminated. Between the two Italian teams, Milan currently seem to be the winner, having scored more goals than Juve (12 against 9).
The Diavolo will not be thinking about that, however. Instead, they will have their sights firmly on obtaining six more points to be certain of direct qualification for the last 16 of the competition, starting tonight against Girona.
There’s a simulator on uefa’s site. It might become quite the pickle for Liverpool and Barcelona, if there’s no huge surprises in the results today and next week.
My simulation ended up with Liverpool/Barcelona against 15-16-17-18th placements, which to my surprise ended up to be Man City/Atalanta/Real/Monaco, meaning those 4 teams ended up playing playoffs against each other and their potential R16 is either the 1st or the 2nd team in the table
All games went in our favor last night!
Leverkussen lost, Aston Villa lost, dortmund lost, juventus lost 2 points.
But if I know my team right, we will not take advantage of that, and probably drop points aswell.
@Rossoneri,you absolutely said what’s in my mind. Thank you!
If we win our last two games, we are 100% guaranteed of making the top 8. Mathematically in that case we can’t be lower than 8th place. However like Rossoneri I fear dropped points against the two small teams we’ll play next as we often seem to struggle against the smaller teams that play low blocks. Hopefully not.