After the results of the third day, Opta's platform points Sporting to the 14th place of the Champions League league phase and consequent access to the playoffs, and FC Porto to the 32nd and subsequent elimination.
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22/10/2026
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A third day of the league phase of the Champions League proved to be an authentic ‘pesadelo’ for Portuguese football, since, first, FC Porto was defeated by the PSV, in the middle of the Dragon Stadium, by 0-1, and then Sporting was not able to do better, against LASK Linz, in the José Alvalade Stadium, and also lost, by 2-3.
The blues and whites gave the round by finished at 34th and antepenultimate place on the table, being, together with Lille and Slovan Bratislava, one of the only three teams that was not yet able to add a single point. Greens and whites, for their part, live in the 12th post, with the same six points of Barcelona, such as Manchester City, Club Brugge and Borussia Dortmund.
And given the latest update of Opta's supercomputer forecast, a company specializing in the processing of sports data, there's good news... and bad news. Let us start with Mondays, which relate to the set guided by Italian coach Francesco Farioli.
This return to what is the biggest race of European football clubs is to be forgotten, and this platform points out that, while maintaining the current downward path, it will end in the 32nd position among 36 participants, with between seven and eight points, which would mean the automatic elimination of it.
The men of Rui Borges, for their part, have reason to believe, since, despite this ‘slip’ appear in the 14th place, with a record from 12 to 13 points, a scenario that, if confirmed, would be worth the clearance for the playoffs, in the image of what had already happened in the sports season of 2024/25, when it was 23rd ranked, under the orders of Ruben Amorim.
If this comes true, the national runners-up in title will fight for a seat on the eighth finals of the million-dollar race with the 19th or 20th grade, which, based on the supervision of the Opta, would respectively be the Bodo/Glimt (adversary that eliminated, in the last season, with the right to ‘remove’ homemade) or the PSV.
What are the chances of Sporting and FC Porto in the Champions League?
At this moment, the so-called supercomputer gives Sporting 55.33% chances of reaching the eighths of the final, 21.79% the ‘quarters’ and 7.97% the ‘halfs’. FC Porto, for its part, has only 12.32% chance of reaching the ‘eight’, 3.56% to the ‘fourths’ and 1.16% to the ‘halfs’, which represents the difficulties it is going through.
Arsenal appears as the leading European champion candidate, with a probability of 20.26%, followed by Bayern Munich (with 15.24%), Manchester City (with 13.75%), Paris Saint-Germain (with 11.54%), Barcelona (with 10.40%), Liverpool (with 7.15%), Real Madrid (with 5.73%), Aston Villa (with 4.04%) and Internazionale (with 1.95%).
An eventual (and unpublished) green and white party has a mere 0.95 chance, while a blue and white reconquest is considered even more unlikely, since it is only 0.07%.