Who's already through to the next round of the Champions League?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.
36 Champions League teams. Eight sprawling match weeks. One gigantic table.
The Champions League is in the first season of its new era and the so-called Swiss-style single table is full of movers, shakers and history-makers as the League Phase enters its final round of fixtures this week.
There will be 18 fixtures played concurrently on Wednesday and there’s still plenty up for grabs for Arsenal, Aston Villa and Manchester City.
Which teams have already qualified for the Champions League knockouts?
The top eight teams in the single Champions League table at the end of Wednesday’s football bonanza will advance to the Round of 16, where they will be seeded.
As it stands, only Liverpool (seven wins from seven) and Barcelona (six wins and a loss) are already assured of their places in the Round of 16.
The next 16 teams (places 9 to 24) will need to win a play-off to qualify for the knockout phase. The first eight of those will be seeded in the play-offs, the bottom eight unseeded.
Four teams currently in automatic qualification spots – Arsenal, Inter Milan, Atletico Madrid and AC Milan – are guaranteed at least a seeded play-off place regardless of what happens in their matches on Wednesday. Arsenal visit Girona in their crunch final game.
Atalanta and Bayer Leverkusen occupy the last two automatic qualification places but could drop as far as the unseeded play-off spots if results go against them, with just one point separating the last automatic place (8th) and the top unseeded play-off place (17th).
The teams currently sitting in that tight second group of eight are all guaranteed at least an unseeded play-off spot but could still win their way into the top eight and automatically progress. That’s also true of Juventus and Celtic, who go into Wednesday outside the top 16.
Aston Villa, Monaco, Feyenoord, Lille and Brest are the teams level on points with Leverkusen and on the cusp of automatic qualification.
Villa host Celtic on Wednesday while Leverkusen are at home against Sparta Prague, Atalanta go to Barcelona, Milan are away against Dinamo Zagreb, and Atletico face a trip to Red Bull Salzburg.
Which teams have already been eliminated?
We already know the fate of the bottom nine teams going into match week eight.
Salzburg, Sparta and Girona have already been eliminated along with Young Boys, Slovan Bratislava, Sturm Graz, Red Star Belgrade, RB Leipzig and Bologna.
There are three teams who need a win and some favours to pinch an unseeded play-off spot: Manchester City have a better goal difference by far than both Dinamo Zagreb and Shakhtar Donetsk. They welcome Club Brugge to the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday.
The fixtures for the all-important play-offs will be drawn on Friday and played over two legs between a seeded team and an unseeded team.
They’ll be allocated to four seeded and four unseeded pots based on their position in the overall mega-table.
So, when the matches are played in the middle two weeks of February, the eight ties will be as follows. Let’s pop the current teams in just for fun.
Juventus v Bayern Munich and Celtic v Real Madrid
or Juventus v Real Madrid and Celtic v Bayern Munich
Sporting CP v Aston Villa and Stuttgart v Monaco
or Sporting CP v Monaco and Stuttgart v Aston Villa
Benfica v Feyenoord and PSG v Lille
or Benfica v Lille and PSG v Feyenoord
PSV v Brest and Club Brugge v Borussia Dortmund
or PSV v Borussia Dortmund and Club Brugge v Brest
But that Boolean tangle is for another day.
The final Champions League League Phase matchday will be played this Wednesday with every game kicking off at 8.00pm UK time.