There's the journey, and there's the destination. For a sport dominated by haves and have-nots -- so, most sports -- we generally understand that the winner of a league or tournament is going to come from a select minority of teams. But in instances in which the destination is predictable, or even a bit boring, the journey can entertain us all the same.
A good Champions League group stage probably isn't going to change the destination all that much, and the current iteration of the tournament certainly hasn't: At the beginning of the tournament, the top four favorites per FiveThirtyEight were Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Chelsea and Liverpool, respectively, and two months later, it's Bayern, City and Liverpool, with Chelsea having plummeted all the way to .