{"id":4121,"date":"2020-12-11T15:22:40","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T15:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/champions-league-what-we-learned-from-group-stage\/"},"modified":"2020-12-11T15:22:40","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T15:22:40","slug":"champions-league-what-we-learned-from-group-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/sport\/champions-league-what-we-learned-from-group-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"Champions League: What we learned from group stage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Champions League group stage has come to an end with a dramatic couple of days as Real Madrid squeezed through and Manchester United were edged out.Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool all went into the last 16 with games to spare.So what have we learned? Who is looking in good shape &#8211; and who isn&#8217;t?Who could English sides face in Champions League last-16 draw?Listen to latest Football Daily podcastTwo big teams in the same group is not as fun as it soundsCristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi both missed two of the six group gamesThere was a lot of excitement when Barcelona and Juventus were drawn in the same group &#8211; Lionel Messi v Cristiano Ronaldo.But in truth it meant only two of the 12 group games were actually important at the top.All eight games between Barcelona or Juventus and Dynamo Kyiv and Ferencvaros resulted in victories to the two European giants.Both sides qualified with two games to go and started resting players. To make matters worse, Ronaldo did not play in the first meeting &#8211; although he did score two penalties in the final group game at the Nou Camp.Bayern Munich are the team to beat againBayern Munich added Leroy Sane to last season&#8217;s Treble-winning teamWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWDWBayern Munich won the Champions League by winning every game last season and they continued that form into this season&#8217;s tournament with four opening wins.Their draw against Atletico Madrid in their fifth game &#8211; which ended a 15-game Champions Lea&#8230; Click below to read the full story from BBC Sport<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/55178978\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Champions League group stage has come to an end with a dramatic couple of days as Real Madrid squeezed through and Manchester United were edged out.Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool all went into the last 16 with games to spare.So what have we learned? Who is looking in good shape &#8211; and who isn&#8217;t?Who&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1105,"featured_media":4122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[37],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v15.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Champions League: What we learned from group stage - The Daily Herald<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/champions-league-what-we-learned-from-group-stage\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Champions League: What we learned from group stage - The Daily Herald\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Champions League group stage has come to an end with a dramatic couple of days as Real Madrid squeezed through and Manchester United were edged out.Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool all went into the last 16 with games to spare.So what have we learned? Who is looking in good shape - and who isn&#039;t?Who&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/champions-league-what-we-learned-from-group-stage\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Daily Herald\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-12-11T15:22:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Augustine Motsinger\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Daily Herald\",\"description\":\"Your Super Aggregated News, Blog &amp; Magazine\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/champions-league-what-we-learned-from-group-stage\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/4121-champions-league-what-we-learned-from-group-stage.jpg\",\"width\":624,\"height\":351,\"caption\":\"Champions League: What we learned from group stage\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/champions-league-what-we-learned-from-group-stage\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/champions-league-what-we-learned-from-group-stage\/\",\"name\":\"Champions League: What we learned from group stage - The Daily Herald\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/champions-league-what-we-learned-from-group-stage\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-12-11T15:22:40+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-12-11T15:22:40+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/fc66c69b3ec4a42e39de97a06cd3f717\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/champions-league-what-we-learned-from-group-stage\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/fc66c69b3ec4a42e39de97a06cd3f717\",\"name\":\"Augustine Motsinger\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9669c47a95e9277853ff2ef6f6a1bd3b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Augustine Motsinger\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","amp_validity":null,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}