The 20 best teams in Europe in 2018/19 ranked: Liverpool, Spurs, Manchester City... but who comes out on top?

Messi, Ronaldo, Salah, Mbappe
Who comes out on top in our 20 best teams in Europe in 2018/19 ranked?

Four English teams have made it through to the finals of both the Champions League and Europe League - an unprecedented level of success for one country.

It will therefore come as no surprise that Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal and Chelsea appear in our list of the 20 best teams in Europe this season. But which positions do they occupy? And where do Manchester City rank?

The three biggest teams in the world - by revenue and fan base at least - are Manchester United, Real Madrid and Barcelona, but all three have had disappointing seasons by their high standards.

United, in particular, have fallen well short of what is expected. Do these behemoths of European football even make our list?

20. Manchester United

Eight defeats in their last 12 matches knocked almost all the enthusiastic stuffing out of the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer salvage operation, a post-PSG capitulation that was rounded off with an almost surreal second Cardiff goal at Old Trafford on Sunday.

They are now a Watford FA Cup win away from the ignominy of having to start their new season, on July 25, in the second qualifying round of the Europa League, a date that had been set aside for a friendly in Shanghai against Tottenham. But, even against that dismal backdrop, Solskjaer's summer job of freshening up his squad ahead of a season with low expectations is hardly the least enviable job in Europe. 

Season highlight: A thrilling, last-gasp, BT Sport pundit-exploding Champions League comeback against Paris Saint-Germain, which set the benchmark for all subsequent second-leg heroics.

19. Inter

While they trail champions Juventus by a mere 23 points with a couple of Serie A fixtures remaining, Inter are on course for their highest league finish since 2011.

Luciano Spalletti is the 11th manager to have taken charge in those eight intervening years and, while there is little prospect of them making a dent in Juve's supremacy, perhaps they are ready to begin shedding their modern reputation as a short-termist basket case of a club.

Season highlight: Edging a five-goal Milan derby thriller at the San Siro back in March.

18. Porto

An unexpected run to the Champions League quarter-finals, where they were promptly dealt with by Liverpool for the second year in a row, perhaps undermined Porto's bread-and-butter duties back in the Primeira Liga. A 1-0 lead was thrown away against Benfica back at the start of March and with it went top spot, leaving them needing a minor miracle on the final day to retain their title.

The good news? A talented young manager in Sergio Conceicao and a squad, for once, that might not suffer the usual summer cherry-picking by Europe's elite.

Season highlight: Following up their five Champions League group-stage wins with a dramatic extra-time last-16 victory over Roma.

Porto's Soares (left) battles for the ball with Liverpool forward Sadio Mane (right)
Porto's Soares (left) battles for the ball with Liverpool forward Sadio Mane (right) Credit: epa

17. RB Leipzig

Ralph Rangnick's Bundesliga upstarts appear to have paced themselves well for the season's climax. Unbeaten since mid-January, they find themselves comfortably marooned in a one-team mini-league for third place - nine points off the top, 10 clear of Borussia Monchengladbach in fourth - and with Germany's domestic cup final to look forward to.

Bayern Munich lie in wait in Berlin next Saturday, but a first piece of silverware would be a handy way for RB Leipzig's to celebrate their 10th birthday.

Season highlight: Reaching their first ever DFB-Pokal final, putting them within 90 minutes of their first major trophy.

16. Real Madrid

While the tale of drafting in a club legend to rescue a plateauing season, only to find that results go even further through the floor at home and in Europe, isn't a unique one in this list, Real Madrid will at least be in their natural habitat of the Champions League next season.

Quite how much money can be thrown at the problem of being a country mile behind good friends Barcelona appears to be a matter of some debate, but a huge chunk of it has been confidently reserved for Eden Hazard. For now, the modest objective is to win their last La Liga fixture and avoid their lowest points total since 2002.

Season highlight: Winning their fourth Fifa Club World Cup title with a 4-1 win over Al-Ain in Abu Dhabi. Nope, neither do we.

15. Lille

As Paris Saint-Germain eased over the line to complete the most predictable, inevitable title win in living memory, France's also-rans are showing some signs of life.

None more so than Christophe Galtier's Lille, with the strongest defence in Ligue 1, all-but wrapping up second place ahead of Lyon with two games to go - ensuring direct passage to the group stages of next season's Champions League. Nicolas Pepe's 22 goals and 11 assists, meanwhile, have put him among the hottest European prospects.

Season highlight: Taking some of the shine off PSG's dominance by handing the champions a 5-1 thrashing last month.

14. Benfica

One point will be enough to regain the Primeira Liga title from Porto and, with 99 goals so far, they will be worthy winners. Of all their emphatic attacking talent, perhaps the 19-year-old Joao Felix - whose languid style has drawn comparisons with Kaka - is the most glittering, and probably the most bankable. 

Season highlight: A 10-0 win over Nacional in February, but that was just the tip of the goalscoring iceberg: Benfica have scored 68 goals in their last 18 games to take them within touching distance of the title.

Joao Felix vies with Fabio Coentrao
Benfica's 19-year-old sensation Joao Felix (left) is wanted by a number of big clubs Credit: afp

13. Napoli

The transition from Maurizio Sarri to Carlo Ancelotti doesn't seem to have halted the Napoli momentum and they are now established as Italy's second fiddle to Juventus. That particular gap will take some serious bridging, but a forthcoming sixth Champions League campaign in eight seasons will only help their cause.

Season highlight: Missing out on the Champions League knockouts on goals scored will have stung, but inflicting a rare defeat on Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool at the Stadio San Paolo will turn out to be a feather in Napoli's continental cap.

12. Arsenal

A confusing first post-Wenger season for Arsenal - often thrilling under Unai Emery, sometimes there for the taking - will not end with a top-four place, but it could still be garnished with Champions League football. The run to the Europa League final has included the sweeping aside of Napoli and Valencia and will end with the other all-English European final in Baku. But which Arsenal will turn up?

Season highlight: A 4-2 win in Valencia, and a hat-trick from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, to seal their first European final since 2006.

11. Borussia Dortmund

Dortmund retain a mathematical chance of the Bundesliga title going into the final day but, whatever happens there, Lucien Favre has had a hugely impressive first season in charge. A record-breaking 15-game unbeaten run was the ideal start, followed by comfortable progress from the Champions League group stage, but the first-leg collapse against Spurs at Wembley was a reminder of their European standing.

Season highlight: Aside from the flourishing of young Englishman Jadon Sancho, it was perhaps the 4-0 thrashing of the unthrashable Atletico Madrid in October.

10. Chelsea

Few managers will have found themselves the target of intermittent booing in a debut season where they finished third in the league, reached a domestic cup final and then a European one.

Those facts, though, partially obscure the overall spectacle that is the Sarri Experience: his opening 18-game unbeaten run was brought to a shuddering halt by Spurs in November, after which his tactical intransigence quickly attracted the fans' ire. Chastening defeats - 6-0 at Manchester City, 4-0 at Bournemouth - co-existed rather puzzlingly with occasional outbreaks of what nobody is actually calling Sarriball.

A return to the Champions League should leave Sarri just about in credit for the season, but 2019/20 isn't going to be any easier...

Season highlight: Home wins over Manchester City and Tottenham in the Premier League and Spurs again in the EFL Cup semi-final suggested Sarri's gameplan can work against their rivals.

9. Atletico Madrid

Any fears that Diego Simeone's methods might eventually burn an entire club out from top to bottom remain unfounded - Atletico will be runners-up in La Liga for the second season running - but a second-leg surrender to Cristiano Ronaldo's Juventus in the Champions League was an uncharacteristic one.

Meanwhile, after the departing Antoine Griezmann, nobody in Simeone's squad managed more than six goals in all competitions. Diego Godin, the on-field emblem of everything Simeone's team represents, has also said his goodbyes. But would you still want to play them?

Season highlight: All the way back in those innocent days in August, when they saw off Real Madrid 4-2 in extra time to win the Uefa Super Cup.

8. Paris Saint-Germain

It's hard to judge them on their domestic performance alone - PSG have topped the Ligue 1 table for all but the first six days of this season - but 27 wins from their first 30 games really cannot be ignored. Further afield, 17 goals in the Champions League group stages and an authoritative 2-0 win at Old Trafford suggested they were ready to challenge in Europe... only for it to fall apart in Paris.

A bizarre football club in a unique situation with a handful of stellar players, who simply cannot take it all to the next level.

Season highlight: An almost terrifyingly easy 9-0 win over Guingamp that demonstrated the extent - and the futility - of their domestic stranglehold.

Neymar celebrates with PSG team-mates Kylian Mpabbe and Dani Alves
Neymar celebrates with PSG team-mates Kylian Mpabbe and Dani Alves Credit: getty images

7. Juventus

Staying unbeaten in Serie A until mid-March was more than enough to secure an eighth title in a row. Things began equally comfortably in Europe until a Ronaldo hat-trick was needed to rescue matters against Atletico in the last 16, before Ajax simply proved too clever in the quarter-finals.

Top scorer Ronaldo's 28 goals - his most modest return since his Manchester United days a decade ago - do not represent a long-term solution up front, but you suspect Juventus will have the resources to address that.

Season highlight: The Champions League second-leg comeback against Atletico, which just about squeezes into the top five Champions League second-leg comebacks this season.

6. Bayern Munich

After winning the last six Bundesliga titles by an average margin of around 17 points, it has been refreshing to see Bayern taken to the last day in 2018/19. Nevertheless, they remain odds-on for the domestic double, which should take the edge off their second-leg schooling from Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool in the last 16 of the Champions League.

Much like PSG, their resources should ensure they stay ahead at home, but it takes more than a few hundred million euros to navigate the European labyrinth.

Season highlight: A five-goal dismantling of title rivals Dortmund at the Allianz Arena last month.

Bayern's Kingsley Coman (centre) bursts forward
Bayern's Kingsley Coman (centre) bursts forward Credit: ap

5. Ajax

This season's footballing fairytale ended up face-first on the Johan Cruyff Arena turf in the 96th minute of a Champions League semi-final second leg. Before Lucas Moura sent Tottenham to the final, though, Ajax had been nothing short of a sensation this season.

171 goals (50 of them either scored or created by Dusan Tadic), a central spine of the gargantuan 19-year-old captain Matthis de Ligt and midfield genius Frenkie de Jong, and a support cast of academy-educated technicians: what wasn't there to love about Ajax in 2018/19?

Season highlight: A Champions League campaign - which started all the way back on July 25 - peaking with the footballing lessons handed out to Real Madrid and Juventus, both on their home turf. 

4. Tottenham

Where would Spurs be in this list - if at all - without having booked their place in the Champions League final? Who cares? To secure a top-four finish without signing a player (not one, not a single one) while their rivals made their usual hay in the transfer market is enough of an achievement. To drag themselves kicking, screaming, hobbling and fist-pumping into the Champions League final? Alchemy.

Despite some lingering concerns that Mauricio Pochettino has wrung as much out of this squad as is humanly possible, Spurs have some serious guts to go with a sprinkling of elite-level talent. They now have a glorious new stadium to go with it, but how much better can it all get than this?

Season highlight: Take your pick, from Lucas Moura's late equaliser at the Nou Camp to keep them in the Champions League, the frankly ridiculous closing stages of the quarter-final against Manchester City or, purely for the celebrations that followed, Moura's 96th-minute goal in Amsterdam that took Spurs to the final.

3. Barcelona

It is more than a decade since a Barcelona captain didn't have a trophy to hold aloft at some point during the season. In that time, they have won the double twice (with another likely to follow next weekend), two trebles and eight of the last eleven La Liga titles. Even with the commensurate expectation and entitlement, to call this season a failure seems churlish. 

The league has been won at a handsome canter, but another catastrophic European exit - to go with 2018's unthinkable collapse against Roma - has chipped away at the Barcelona veneer. Lionel Messi (600 goals and counting) may have a couple more years of influence left, but the Nou Camp no longer has the monopoly on irresistible, uncrackable football. But it will probably have a couple more trophies by the end of May.

Season highlight: Putting ten past Real Madrid over the course of four Clasicos, kicked off with a 5-1 battering at the Nou Camp back in October. Also, Lionel Messi suddenly deciding he'll start taking free kicks seriously.

2. Liverpool

The consensus is that one defeat and 97 points ought to be enough to win a league title but not, it turns out, in this freak Premier League season. Despite leading the way for the middle third of the campaign, Liverpool will be remembered as the greatest domestic runners-up there may ever be. Fortunately for Jurgen Klopp, the heroics don't end there. After teetering on the precipice of Champions League elimination in late November, his side started to gather steam - out-thinking Bayern Munich, outgunning Porto and then outrageous against Barcelona - that took them to the final in Madrid. 

It's a trophy that wouldn't end their 30-year domestic itch, but it would be just reward for their relentlessness. Unless Spurs can find one more twist...

Season highlight: An other-worldly atmosphere at Anfield as they put four past an ashen-faced Barcelona to complete a Champions League turnaround for the ages.

1. Manchester City

The first team to defend the Premier League title in a decade have been the exception that proved the rule that winning the league is one thing, but retaining it is quite another. By their measures, last summer was a modest one in the transfer market (even if they did spend a record fee on Riyad Mahrez) and that resulted in Pep Guardiola's tighter unit of players refining the style of play that has proved so hard for the Premier League to decode.

14 straight wins, achieved largely without Kevin De Bruyne, kept their domestic noses in front. The EFL Cup now feels like a footnote (reminder: they won the semi-final 10-0 on aggregate), and their Champions League carelessness against Spurs will keep Guardiola awake all summer, but - over the course of nine gruelling months - City have been at the forefront.

Season highlight: The Etihad annihilations of Chelsea (6-0), Schalke (7-0) and, yes, even Burton Albion (9-0) all demonstrated, in their own way, just how powerless opponents can be when faced with the whirling dervish of Manchester City at their most single-minded.

Do you agree with our rankings? How would you rank the 20 best teams in Europe in 2018/19? Tell us in the comments section below.

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