2024-25 Champions League: Round 1 Preview

A brand new season of the Champions League begins this evening and there's a fresh format this year with the introduction of a league phase in place of the group stage that we were all used to.

On Superbru Football, our Champions League Predictor game is all set for you to make your Round 1 score predictions so that you can challenge friends in a private league.

Here are the Round 1 fixtures in full:



As you can see, the new league phase begins with Aston Villa making their long-awaited return to Europe's top table as they travel to Switzerland to face Young Boys. Defending champions Real Madrid host VfB Stuttgart in what is a very challenging first Champions League fixture in over a decade for the German side, while AC Milan vs. Liverpool is perhaps this evening's standout game.

A major motivation for UEFA deciding to switch to this new format was the chance to have big matches between European giants right from the off, and Man. City's clash with Inter on Wednesday certainly fits that bill having previously met in the 2023 Final. Girona's first ever Champions League match is a tricky one at the Parc des Princes against PSG and then on Thursday we have an intriguing fixture between last season's Europa League winners Atalanta and Premier League contenders Arsenal.

Match previews

I won't be going through every fixture and sharing my thoughts on the likely scorelines in this overview and that's because I've been busy putting together more detailed individual match previews for every single game in the round for those of you that are Superbru Premium users.

As the samples below for Young Boys vs. Villa and Milan vs. Liverpool hopefully show, the Premium previews aim to provide you with helpful and insightful context at the tap of a button on the matches page when you're making your predictions. The previews are provided for every single match in both the Champions League and the Premier League Predictors, so that's quite a lot of information over the course of a season! By supporting Superbru as a Premium user, you also receive an ad-free experience.



Click here to find out more or upgrade to Superbru Premium

How do you see the opening round playing out? Feel free to leave your own predictions in the comments section.

I'm excited to see how things unfold in this new format, but with 7 rounds still to come after this first one, is the pressure reduced in games such as Man City vs. Inter since there are so many fixtures still to obtain points from even if you start with a loss?

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