As many of you know, the UEFA Champions League has a new format this year. The field has been expanded to 36 with each team playing 8 games against 8 different teams in the competition with 4 at home and 4 on the road.

The top 8 at the end of this process move directly to the Round of 16. The next 16 will play each other in the first round of the Knockout Rounds. The last 12 are eliminated. Here is how things currently stand:

There are only two teams right now that are through to the Round of Sixteen: Liverpool and Barcelona. There are also 9 teams that are eliminated: DFO fave Young Boys, Slava Bratislava (I buy my own hotel!), RB Salzburg, Sturm-Graz, Czrvena Zezda (buy some vowels and maybe you’ll do better!), Girona, RN Leipzig (Red Bull HQ can’t be happy), Sparta Prague, and Bologna.

You may have noticed a very interesting name sitting just inside the Elimination Zone. Man City is having a terrible campaign, not just in the Premier League. If they lose, they’re out. Thus, there is A LOT at stake today.

In classic Elimination Round fashion, all the games will start at the same time today. The best coverage will be on Paramount Plus as they will be streaming EVERY SINGLE GAME and will also have Kate Scott (formerly Adbo), Thierry Henry, Jamie Carragher, and Micah Richards previewing the games and providing live updates.

They are quite good at the hosting gig and they’re very funny. Sometimes they get close to Inside The NBA with the funny. There’s a long-running joke with Micah’s favourite team being Brest.

Here is today’s schedule with all times Pacific:

It’s going to be an exciting day with the possibilities of who qualifies, who gets eliminated, and who gets a bye into the Round of Sixteen changing by the minute.

There is a cool simulator on the UEFA website where you can pick the results of the games and figure out who will end up where. You can find it here: https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/simulator/

Who are you rooting for? Yours in the comments.