Champions League Favourite Team....Why not Barcelona?

Every year the same question is made: who will grab the next Champions League trophy? The first team that comes to most people´s mind is the actual european champion. FC Barcelona. Last season Barcelona won everything they could have won in Spain. The spanish championship, the cup (Copa del Rey) and Champions League. They have top world players like Messi, Iniesta, Xavi or the new team mate Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Their young coach Pepe Guardiola seems to know how to motivate the players and has an offensive culture playing. It looks like Camp Nou´s team is perfect at the moment.

However, Barcelona will have to struggle if they want to be well succeed. Their eternal rivals Real Madrid are stronger than last seasons. The current president Florentino Peréz came to Madrid with new ideas and a big budget: he intends to build a more competitive team through buying top players, spending whatever it takes to make a world class team. Lets wait and see if Real Madrid´s some new awesome players as Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema and Xavi Alonso allied to the spirit of the club are enough to conquer Europe for the 10th time in history.

The 4 "big" teams in England are also running for the european title. Last season ´s runner-out Manchester United may have lost their star CR, but they still have arguments to discuss a presence in the final of the competition. Chelsea remains the top team we are used to see in last seasons and they are one of the favourites to win CL. About Liverpool and Arsenal we can say that both teams are strong enough to go through the final, in spite of the fact that they are not as consistent as they had shown to Europe a long time ago.

Inter, AC Milan and Juventus are also capable of beating any team. Mourinho has the team he always wanted (Eto´o, Milito and Shneider give to Inter more attacking power) and Juventus are in a great form (finally we see this team playing good football!). AC Milan seem weaker than their eternal rivals, but they are always a club that fights for european good results.

As you all know CL usually is won by english, spanish and italian teams....but there are some outsiders that can cause some surprise such as Lyon (France), FC Porto (Portugal), FC Bayern München and Wolfsburg (both from Germany). Since 1998 only 2 teams that are not from England-Spain-Italy have won CL. They are FC Bayern Munchen in 2001 and FC Porto in 2004.

The teams who appear to better now are Barcelona, Chelsea and Inter. Anything can happen...but my guess goes to Barcelona.