Champions League recreates magic of American sports’ playoff push with chaotic 18 game league phase finale

No matter the sport of choice or how comical one’s failure to retain math skills past elementary school, there is one mental muscle American sports fans are comfortable flexing – calculating playoff math.

The primary objective is to check in on your own team, but anyone in the habit of doing playoff math knows it’s equally fun to fixate on other teams’ fates. The more permutations, the better – days of such magnitude are more exciting when the stakes are high for as many teams as possible, and increasingly boring when the scenarios are straightforward. Complications are encouraged; after all, punching numbers into formulas is much more fun when a spot in the playoffs is on the line than it ever was in class.

It may be a storied staple of American sports, but the frenetic chase for spots on the table will find an unexpected, but welcome new home in Europe on Wednesday, when 18 games in the UEFA Champions League take place at the same time in the finale of the competition’s new-look league phase. Playoff math’s European soccer debut might just be bigger and better, too — all but nine of the 36 teams in the league phase are still alive, and not a single one of them has locked in their seeding. There’s at least something on the line in 16 out of 18 matches.

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What’s at stake on Matchday 8

Like a regular season finale, there are a few boring scenarios. Liverpool and Barcelona have already booked direct passageway to the round of 16 and the odds are high that they finish one and two, respectively. Just about everything else is up for grabs, though, and there’s much the Champions League is borrowing from its counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The teams that join Liverpool and Barcelona in the top eight will earn a pair of bye weeks and a spot in the round of 16, and those ranked ninth through 24th will face off against each other for their own berths in the last 16. The remaining eight will simply pack their bags and go home, earning a long spring to ruminate over what exactly went wrong for them.

The Champions League will also take a page out of other sports by placing a newfound value on seeding. Ranking is rarely consequential in soccer; the previous Champions League format and current World Cup structure essentially marks teams as “seeded” and “unseeded,” randomly drawing the first batch against the second to formulate a bracket. That will no longer be the case for European soccer’s most elite club competition – just like it is in several other sports, the knockout bracket will be crafted in a draw on Friday (which you can catch at 6 a.m. ET on CBS Sports Golazo Network) specifically from the league phase’s final standings, adding another layer of consequence to Wednesday’s action.

The good news for the new-look Champions League is that the first-ever league phase has already been a roaring success – heavyweights like Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain have stumbled so much that they risk elimination on Wednesday, while UEFA Europa League winners Atalanta could sneak into the top eight by the end of Matchday 8. The competition’s organizers have already achieved the expressed goal of ensuring each game matters more than it did in the group stages of years past, but Wednesday’s action will thrust that mission into overdrive – not only will every game matter, but every little play will, too.

UEFA Champions League: What Man City, Liverpool, Barcelona, Bayern, PSG and others need to do on Matchday 8

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The new league phase format pays dividends

Some of this can be attributed to the weirdness of the new format – 36 teams play eight games against a randomly selected group of opponents, resulting in uniquely tight standings heading into Matchday 8. Think about it this way: just three points separate third place Arsenal from 13th place Brest, meaning any one of those 10 teams can climb into – or drop out of – the top eight with a single touch of the ball. The same is true further down the table: 19th place PSV are just four points above 27th ranked Shakhtar Donetsk, meaning any one of the nine teams that falls in that group – including City and PSG – could find themselves out of the competition with one small play.

Much of this may be new to the Champions League, but do not mistake the tournament’s newness for a gentleness. There are four more teams in the league phase than there are in the NFL, and six more than in the NBA and MLB. On top of that, this year’s edition has been so dramatic that 27 teams are still alive competing for 24 spots on Wednesday. Nearly all of the 18 games on the schedule are of consequence, and especially so for the likes of City and PSG. Disorder is perhaps the only predictable aspect of Matchday 8, and the lengthy list of scenarios means rooting for chaos will very much be on the table when the games begin.

Playoff math may not be inherently unfamiliar to Europeans – their domestic soccer leagues have prepared them well enough, and they are no strangers to American sports at this point. A new, frantic version of the phenomenon awaits in the league phase finale, though, even for those with an expert level understanding of the calculations. Bring on Matchday Mayhem.