There are still 126 matches to play until we know which 24 teams will feature in the knockout phase but that doesn’t mean we haven’t learned anything yet. Here are the key data talking points from week one. Premier League teams took five of the eight automatic qualification spots in 2025-26.
England’s representatives all won this week to take a step toward repeating that feat. Arguably the biggest winners were Liverpool, as they were the only English team to play an opponent drawn from pot one. They were at home, though, so perhaps the away victories for Arsenal, Aston Villa and Manchester City were more impressive.
Regardless of which club can be most pleased, the Premier League’s dominance was absolute. English teams collectively out-shot their opponents 102-44, put 28 more efforts on target and had 24 shots deemed by Opta to be big chances while conceding only five. They topped the expected goal difference by country too, a chart that has Italy at the bottom.
Como won, Roma drew at Fenerbahce while Napoli and Inter faced Arsenal and Real Madrid respectively. All is far from lost, but Serie A’s numbers were not pretty. It wasn’t all bad for Inter.
They were one of two teams who had at least 57 touches in the opposition penalty area this week. It’s an incredibly high tally – one that has only been topped once in the Premier League this season, where the average is 24.6 per team per game. For Paris Saint-Germain to be so strongly camped in the Slovan Bratislava box was hardly a surprise.
For Inter to be so busy in the Real Madrid penalty area at the Santiago Bernabéu was more worthy of comment. It would be easy to dismiss this as classic Real; they did not play well in the Champions League but won regardless. And they mustered an enormous nine big chances, missing seven of them, so might have won more comfortably with sharper finishing.
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