Football is arguably the world’s most popular sport and competitions like the Champions League regularly attract the most attention and betting. Our guide is designed to help you navigate the vast world of Champions League betting.
Previous winners have included European titans like Barcelona, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Liverpool and Real Madrid. But it’s a competition that is also well-known for producing plenty of upsets which means that it’s a great option for all sports betting fans. Stick with us and we’ll help you with some expert advice to make the most of your bets.
We’re going to give you a quick guide to Champions League betting. This will show you how you can identify the teams in with the best shot of winning this famous competition. As a result, you’ll know how to track down expert advice and use relevant statistics to place a successful bet on any Champions League match.
In addition to this, we will provide you with a few simple and free betting tips that you can put into action when analysing the form of the relevant football teams. This will explain how things like home advantage and injuries can have a massive impact in the success of your football bets. We’ll also look at how you can put down a simple bet on Champions League football, and even explain some of the betting jargon that you should know before betting on the competition.
Although the Champions League is one of football’s biggest competitions, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to know each of the competing teams too well. After all, you might know UK-based Champions League clubs like Manchester City and Chelsea, but you might have a limited knowledge of European Champions League sides such as Ajax, Benfica and Bayer Leverkusen.
Thankfully, we are here to show you how you can use the internet to access a massive amount of statistics that can do a good job in helping you land a winning bet. In order to help you out, we’ve provided a few key tips that you can use to find out the most important facts about each competing team.
When you bet on the Champions League, the first thing that you’ll need to do is to figure out who the best team in the tournament is. You can usually do this by looking at the recent winners of the competition. But while clubs like Liverpool, Real Madrid and Barcelona have had a good winning run over the past few years, they can’t be guaranteed to win the Champions League this season. After all, all teams have their upturns and downturns in fortune, plus the fact that the Champions League takes place for much of the standard football season means that a team could have a fairly different line-up by the time that the Champions League final comes around.
It’s something that’s been seen with legendary teams like Real Madrid. This massive Spanish team have won the tournament an astonishing 13 times including five Champions League titles between 2013 and 2018. While Real Madrid dominated this competition, they couldn’t maintain their run of form in the 2018-19 season and were dumped out of the round of 16 by the tournament’s surprise team, Ajax.
Real Madrid’s bad fortunes were put down to a variety of factors that you should be aware of when you are looking to bet on any Champions League favourites. The Spanish club had been through a number of head coaches, lost key players like Cristiano Ronaldo, and suffered from a number of high profile injuries in the run up to the football tournament, and it’s things like this that you should always factor into your Champions League betting.
Cup tournaments like the Champions League are thrilling for the fact that they always seem to produce a number of shock results. While standard league competitions like the Premier League and La Liga feature enough matches to produce a good amount of consistency, when you get to the knockout rounds of the Champions League, things can get much harder to predict.
The past few Champions League tournaments have featured a number of teams who have defied the bookmakers to advance much further in the competition than anybody would have predicted. The fact that there was a 2018/19 Champions League semi-final between Tottenham Hotspur and Ajax would have surprised many people, and previous incarnations of the tournament have seen the likes of Benfica, Sevilla and Wolfsburg reaching the quarter-final stage.
Plus the group stages of the Champions League also have the power to deliver all manner of shock upsets. While you might want to bet on iconic European teams like Juventus and Paris Saint Germain to top their groups, both of these sides have had a fairly barren run on the Champions League recently, and it’s always a good idea to look at the recent form of the underdog.
The bookmakers will always favour the bigger teams in the Champions League, but there’s real value to be found in backing an underdog if they have important things like home advantage in their favour. While it might seem odd to back teams like Club Brugge, PSV Eindhoven and Red Star Belgrade, all of these teams are more than capable of staging an upset, and bets on these clubs could pay off in a big way.
Nobody is going to really know what’s going to happen in a Champions League match. But there is plenty to be gained from listening to what the experts have to say about the game in question. Whether it’s taking a look at what the newspapers’ football pundits have to say to watching any football review shows on television, you’ll benefit from adding an extra level of insight to your Champions League betting strategies.
Obviously, you don’t want to follow the advice and predictions too blindly, but there’s nothing like doing your homework for getting more consistent wins with your football bets.
Competitions like the Champions League attract huge numbers of punters as they feature the biggest clubs in the continent. But merely backing the most famous teams to win each match they play won’t get you too far. After all, we just have to look at how Manchester United have fared in recent years to know that global fame doesn’t necessarily ensure Champions League triumph.
As a result, you’ll need to think a little more critically about how you bet on the Champions League. While it might be tempting just to put your money on bookmakers’ favourites like Barcelona and Liverpool, you should always be aware that just about anything can happen in these matches.
After all, any Champions League match is a hugely emotional affair. This means that even the biggest underdog can get a shock win. So here’s a quick look at some of the key things that we look at to help you make a good football prediction.
The Champions League is famous for throwing together European football teams who already have a good history of playing against each other. You only have to think of those classic European showdowns between teams like Real Madrid and Juventus, and Bayern Munich and Manchester United to see that there’s plenty to be learned in how these teams have competed in the past.
Plus it’s always interesting to see those Champions League matches when teams play against other teams from their home country with recent finals between Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur, and Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid being good examples. All of this means that you have plenty to look back on when you make your Champions League predictions.
It’s fairly easy to do a quick internet search for the head-to-head record between two football teams. Here you will get to see how certain clubs have managed to have the upper hand in the past, and you’ll also understand how recent form could influence your prediction. Using these patterns of success in head-to-head encounters is therefore a great way to bet on the Champions League.
With the exception of the Champions League final, each game in this competition will give one team a home advantage. This is hugely important to all of the matches, and we have seen how home advantage can have a dramatic impact on the fate of games in the knockout rounds with Liverpool’s incredible semi-final comeback against Barcelona in 2019 being just one example.
As a result, you’ll always want to factor in home advantage to any bet that you make on Champions League football. Certain stadiums like Old Trafford, San Siro and Camp Nou are well-known for producing an electrifying atmosphere that can have a large impact on how each game goes.
When it’s in a two-legged Champions League knock-out round, having home advantage in the second match can often provide a team with a slight advantage. We have seen many clubs stage a dramatic comeback against the odds in the second leg thanks to having a particularly vocal home-crowd support.
Obviously playing at home can only go so far. For example, in the 2019/20 Champions League, Liverpool lost their first match away to Atletico Madrid 1-0. They were widely tipped to win the second leg as it was to be played at their famously atmospheric home ground of Anfield. But Atletico managed to produce a shock win of 3-2 in extra time which goes to show that playing at home definitely doesn’t guarantee a winning result.
A football team is only as good as their players, and you’ll need to look carefully at how any injuries or suspensions could affect their results on the pitch. For example, Tottenham Hotspur’s 2019/20 Champions League campaign was dramatically cut short when they lost star players like Harry Kane and Son Heung Min to injury.
While many large clubs will be able to plug in the gaps in their line-up with some decent replacements, when it comes to the second half of the season when the fitness of players is starting to wane, you’ll find that all Champions League matches will get a little harder to predict.
There’s a massive number of things that you should think about before betting on the Champions League. While we will always do our best to provide you with our expert predictions, we think that you should always keep a few points in mind in order to make a sensible Champions League betting prediction. Here are just a few factors to consider.
Not only should you consider which football team you’re betting on, but you should also think carefully about when you put down your Champions League bets. After all, bookmakers will constantly be changing their odds in the run-up to the big match, and there’s plenty to be made by putting down your football bets at the most valuable time.
You might find greatest value when you put down an outright bet on the Champions League overall winner in advance of the competition. After all, there will be many months between the start of the Champions League and its eventual conclusion. This means that the bookmakers’ odds will always be very different as certain clubs get knocked out of the tournament. It can be a risky tactic to try, but if you bet with low stakes, this kind of bet can pay off in the long run.
Such an approach can also be applied to individual matches where things like injuries or a loss of form can have a huge impact on the betting odds. Don’t forget that you’ll also be given the chance to try live betting on the Champions League which is another way to find decent value with your football bets – particularly if you take advantage of any cash out options.
It’s always interesting to see how teams fare as the end of the season approaches. With the standard football season starting in August, and a large number of Champions League matches to play, there’s a good chance that even the healthiest teams will start to look a likely shaky by the time that spring comes around.
This is why you often see a large number of surprise results in the knock-out rounds of the Champions League. After all, the round of 16 commonly takes place after the winter period that has frequently brought many top clubs to their knees as a result of the quantity of matches played.
You might see teams struggling to cope without key players in the closing stages of the season which can have a big impact on the odds that you are offered. Anything from the loss of a playmaker like Eden Hazard in Real Madrid’s midfield to an injured defender like Manchester City’s Aymeric Laporte can have a big impact on whether their teams can win their Champions League matches.
Plus the overall mood of the teams can vary dramatically at the end of the season compared to the start. If a team have little hope of winning their own domestic league title, they might put in an extra level of effort into their Champions League matches.
There’s nothing like a good run of wins to produce plenty more wins in the Champions League. This is because all teams will feed off the momentum picked up in their domestic leagues to shine at this legendary tournament. Similarly, if a team has had a bad run of results in their league, then they might find it hard to break the habit in their next big Champions League game.
Top clubs like Barcelona and Manchester City will look a lot less promising when they don’t feature star players like Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero. This is why it’s essential to monitor all of the latest injury news so that you can see how each team’s line-up might look when matchday comes around.
Similarly, any team competing in the Champions League will have to battle without players who might be suspended. Explosive players like Sergio Ramos might be a key part of the Real Madrid squad, but when they keep picking up yellow and red cards, their absence could be keenly felt in any big Champions League match.
All of these things should be factored into your Champions League bets. While each team is always more than the some of their parts, when modern day legends like Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar or Robert Lewandowski are missing from their respective sides, you’ll know that teams like Juventus, Paris Saint Germain and Bayern Munich might not be quite as impressive as normal.
Like all sports, football is awash with statistics that should be used to inform your bets. Whether you’re looking at the tournament’s top goalscorers like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Robert Lewandowski, or are just seeing which team have kept the greatest number of clean sheets, it can all have a big impact on the success of your Champions League predictions. So always do your research before you bet on this football tournament.
If you want to consistently bet on the Champions League and win, you’ll want to make sure that you are getting a little more systematic in how you go about betting on this tournament. After all, if you just put down your bets on your favourite team, then you’ll probably stand a good chance of throwing away your betting stake.
So we are going to take the time to walk you through how you should approach betting on the Champions League. Obviously, this might not be able to help you win every Champions League bet that you take, but it can all be a good way to avoid making some simple mistakes.
You should start off by taking a good look at the upcoming Champions League matches, and see which ones could offer you the best value. For example, there might not be much point in betting on a mismatched group stage game between Real Madrid and CSKA Moscow, but you might find better value on those evenly matched games such as a match between Juventus and Manchester United.
We would also recommend betting on those Champions League matches that feature the teams you know best. This will help you identify the key components of each team and how they are likely to play against each other. For example, if Borussia Dortmund had a good attack but a shaky defence, then you’d know that you could be in for a goalscoring treat when they play a similarly attack-minded side such as Liverpool.
The internet is full of helpful resources that can be used to put down a better-informed Champions League bet. We would always recommend taking the time to visit all of the most authoritative sources to make sure that you are putting down your bets on well-researched statistics.
By evaluating a team’s past form and head-to-head encounters, you’ll be well-placed to see how they are going to perform once matchday comes around. But you shouldn’t just base your Champions League bets on statistics, as there is plenty to be gained from reading all of the latest football rumours and news stories.
Whether it’s a manager like Jose Mourinho managing to alienate his squad or a player like Neymar falling out of favour with his club’s fans, it can all play a big role in how the game could unfold. So be sure to factor in things like this when you bet on the Champions League.
After you have made your predictions about how the Champions League match could go down, then you’ll want to find the best value odds on the market. You might want to put down a basic match-winner bets, but there’s plenty of value to be had by trying things like handicap betting, betting on halves and so on. Just remember to shop around the different bookmakers to make sure you’re betting on the best Champions League odds possible.
Everybody can enjoy simple Champions League bets like predicting the match-winner. But if you want to take your football bets up a level, then you might want to consider some alternative betting markets. Here is a quick look at some of the more unusual terms that you might find at a bookmaker’s site.
Users must be 18+. If you are having trouble with gambling then help and advice can be found at begambleaware.org. Please Play Responsibly.
This site is using Cloudflare and adheres to the Google Safe Browsing Program. We adapted Google's Privacy Guidelines to keep your data safe at all times.