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As the summer season looms over us, European football peers into its final stretch of the 2018/19 campaign. With only a handful of games left in the top five leagues, the race towards the finish line is heating up and winners will emerge soon.
Similarly, the race to secure a Champions League place is winding down, though, the challenge is hardly easing up. As many as three teams in the Premier League and LaLiga are vying are for one, whereas scenarios in Serie A and Bundesliga are close too.
However, some big names who have endured a difficult campaign so far, are now running the risk of missing out on a Champions League spot. Let’s look at the top five of them:
#5 TSG 1899 Hoffenheim
Die Kraichgauer’s spectacular renaissance from a mid-table outfit into a Bundesliga powerhouse is among the league’s biggest stories in the recent years.
Having retained their top-flight status by the skin of their teeth in 2016 after finishing 16th and just a point above the drop zone, Hoffenheim have finished within the top four in each of the following two seasons. But after a topsy-turvy campaign this term, that fairytale run is under threat: Hoffenheim are sixth in the table currently and have only five games to close down the six-point gap between fourth-placed Eintracht Frankfurt and themselves.
Even though the last 11 games have yielded just a solitary defeat, Julian Nagelsmann’s side have peaked a bit late. Also the catastrophic first-half of the season which saw them win only five out of 17 games has come home to roost.
But Hoffenheim do have a silver lining here as four of the five teams from their home stretch of the campaign are positioned below them. Only the daunting trip to the Borussia Park to take on Gladbach, who too are fighting fires in their quest for Champions League football, might ruffle a few feathers.
But so erratic has been their season, that Hoffenheim can’t afford to take their foot off the pedal at any point. Squeaky bum time ahead!
#4 Valencia C.F
Valencia may have mastered the art of fighting back from a deficit, but just don’t know how to protect a lead: the Bats have drawn or lost most games in the league from a winning position this season with seven. And the consequences are going another season without Champions League football.
Currently teetering precariously in sixth position in the standings with 49 points from 32 games, Los Leones are just three points worse off Sevilla, but Athletic Bilbao are hot on their coat tails with another three points deficit as the race for the final Champions League spot is getting murkier by the week.
Valencia also have trips to Betis and Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano to negotiate, making their prospects appear grimmer. Europa League triumph offers them a chance to set things straight, though a potential clash with Arsenal in the semi-finals makes those circumstances look bleak too.
Marcelino Garcia and his team are left to traverse a rocky road ahead.
#3 AS Roma
From scripting a historic comeback in the Champions League against Barcelona to being mauled 7-1 by Fiorentina, AS Roma have plunged mightily in the last 12 months. Eusebio Di Francesco was given the boot after a series of disappointing results, but things have hardly changed for the better even after miracle-worker Claudio Ranieri took over the helm.
Back-to-back losses to Spal and Napoli followed by a home draw to the Viola opened the door for AC Milan to sneak into the top four, leaving the Romans trailing by a point and position adrift. Now with six games left in the campaign, they still have tough away games to Inter Milan and Sassuolo interspersed between a home game to champions-elect Juventus.
A fragile defence - they’ve leaked 46 goals this season - coupled with the poor form of talisman Edin Dzeko - he’s struck only eight times in the league - have hurt Roma badly and forced to look for goal-scoring options elsewhere. Aleksandar Kolarov has stepped up once again, but the fact that he’s the team’s third-best scorer shows everything that’s wrong with the team.
Radja Nainggolan’s departure to the Nerazzurri has also made Roma poorer for a capable midfielder.
La Magica had consistently been second-best in the league for a long time until Napoli’s resurgence in recent years. But the decline this season has been so steep that even a Champions League place finish has become a difficult objective to achieve.
#2 Chelsea
For all the fanfare with which Maurizio Sarri took over the helm, his ‘Sarriball’ philosophy has proved to be quiet a catastrophe with this team. Even though Chelsea did appear to grasp the concept early on by winning each of the first five games and going up to 12 games unbeaten, it has all gone downhill for him and his band of busted flushes since the 3-1 humbling by Tottenham Hotspur in late November.
The Blues have then gone on to lose to Arsenal, Wolves, Leicester City, Everton and lately Liverpool, in between the consecutive annihilations on the road to Bournemouth and Manchester City.
Such an atrocious run has not only squashed their title aspirations but also left next season’s Champions League prospects hanging by the balance. Chelsea are level on points with Arsenal, but ranked lower by virtue of an inferior goal-difference and have also played a game more.
Gonzalo Higuain’s disappointing run of just three goals from 12 appearances have prolonged Chelsea’s striker woes, while Jorginho’s arrival has produced effects contrasting to the ideas with which he was roped in. Marcos Alonso is going through a great slump since the turn of the year and Willian’s selection over Pedro despite a terrible season continues to raise questions.
Then there’s the bewildering ignorance of a promising youngster like Callum Hudson Odoi too.
All of this makes you wonder whether Chelsea have really progressed since the disappointing season under Antonio Conte last year. A Europa League triumph may help salvage some pride after such a difficult year, and now that appears to also be the only way with which Chelsea could qualify for the Champions League next season.
#1 Manchester United
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's honeymoon period seems to have met with a conclusion: five defeats in the last seven games in all competitions have tarnished the whirlwind start he made to life as Manchester United’s caretaker manager, and now they’re back at sixth - the same position they were mired in at the time Jose Mourinho was sacked.
Fatigue seems to have crept in after a series of impressive results because nothing else can truly justify the toothless showings in recent weeks.
Marcus Rashford’s shooting boots are now running out of steam as he’s drawn a blank in the last four games, whilst Romelu Lukaku hasn’t got a whiff of the onion bag since striking twice in the historic win over PSG last month.
The Red Devils have had an unforgiving last few weeks, to be fair to them. But the daunting run notwithstanding, they are now left with a trip to Everton before hosting Manchester City and Chelsea successively as Solskjaer braces for yet more arduous fixtures before seeing off the season.
And anything other than wins would prove to be detrimental to United’s Champions League hopes.
