Barcelona legend Carles Puyol gives his prediction about who is a strong candidate to win the Champions League this season. Puyol assesses Manchester City and Juventus will be Barcelona’s heavy competitors for the prestigious title.
This season has been ensured that the Champions League will have a new champion. This is because the champions that endured three consecutive seasons, Real Madrid were eliminated in the round of 16 by Ajax Amsterdam.
So far the competition map for this season’s Champions League winer is evenly distributed. Because there are still many strong teams left over from the eight teams that will play in the quarter-finals later.
Seeing the teams that have already escaped, Puyol already has a picture of who will be the champion this season. “For me, of course I want Barcelona to win this trophy,” Puyol said at the Press Conference of the UEFA Champions League Trophy Presented by Heineken in Surabaya on Wednesday (13/3).
Read Puyol’s complete predictions about who will be the UCL champion below.
New power
Puyol also considers Juventus and Manchester City to be serious challengers for Barcelona for the UCL title hunt this season.
Puyol gave this prediction after seeing what the two teams did in the Champions League last 16 second leg, where Juve successfully made a comeback against Atletico Madrid and Manchester City slaughtered Schalke 7-0.
“For me, Juventus is one of the most likely teams to win but there are also City who also have the potential to become champions. So we’ll see what will happen later, especially in the Liverpool match against Bayern.”
Potential Black Horse
On this occasion, Puyol also underlined that there were a number of black horse teams that could potentially be a big surprise in the quarter-finals later.
One of the black horse teams he values can be troublesome for European giants in the last eight, Ajax Amsterdam.
“Ajax has a young team, but they play really well and they can be a big surprise.” said the former Spanish national team captain.
