At this point, any team can win the Champions League.

And well, uh, yeah. Soccer is random, and all it takes is three more results to lift the biggest trophy in Europe.

But usually — because soccer is so random on the game-by-game basis — there’s at least one surprise team in the semifinals. You know who I’m talking about: that team who we all know technically could win the Champions League, but who we’d all be shocked to see actually win the Champions League.

Not this year, though. Among the four semifinalists, we have:

1) PSG: The team that already clinched Ligue 1
2) Inter Milan: The team that won Serie A last year
3) Barcelona: The team that’s leading LaLiga and has scored 20 goals more than anyone else in Spain
4) Arsenal: The team that’s second in the Premier League, has finished second in the Premier League in each of the previous two seasons, and just beat Real Madrid 5-1 on aggregate

Per the implied probabilities derived from ESPN BET’s odds, Barcelona are the most likely to win it all at 31%, then PSG at 27%, Arsenal at 26%, and Inter Milan at 16%. In other words, no team is a huge favorite, and no team is a huge underdog.

So, given that any team really can win the whole thing, let’s look at the strengths and weaknesses of every semifinalist. Before Arsenal face PSG on Tuesday, and Barcelona face Inter Milan on Wednesday, let’s take a look at the reasons why each team will win the Champions League — and why they won’t.

Arsenal

Why they will win:They’re the best defense left — and maybe the best defense in the world

It can be annoying to hear it all the time, but the Premier League really just is the most competitive league in the world. We can argue about what league is the most competitive right now at the absolute top, but from top-to-bottom, England’s first division is significantly better than everywhere else.

Manchester United and Tottenham are both having once-in-a-decade terrible seasons, and they’ve managed to reach the Europa League semifinals. Aston Villa probably won’t qualify for the Champions league next year, and they pushed PSG to the brink in the Champions League this year. Per FBref, West Ham United spend about as much as Juventus on player wages … and they’re currently in 17th in the league.

Before you even consider any of that, Arsenal still grade out as one of the three best defensive teams in the world. Coming into the last weekend, their adjusted goals allowed (a blend of 70% expected goals, 30% goals) was the third best behind Napoli and Bayern Munich: 0.86 per game.

Here’s how they compare by goals and expected goals allowed compared to the rest of Europe’s Big Five to leagues, with the four remaining semifinalists highlighted:

Even without making a league adjustment, Arsenal are playing at a higher defensive level than any of the other three teams. When you factor in the difficulty of the Premier League, that gap only grows.

I’d say all but one player in Arsenal’s starting 11 (Thomas Partey, or whoever replaces him in the midfield) is an above-average defender for his position. And on top of that, manager Mikel Arteta demands defensive contributions from all of his attackers. So, the individual talent makes it tough enough, and then the tactical approach makes it even tougher to create anything decent against the Gunners.

In a knockout competition, where you can advance without winning but can’t advance if you lose, a lockdown defense is especially valuable.

Why they won’t win:They’re the worst attack left — by far

If we flip the adjusted-goal metric around to the attacking end, it’s the opposite story for Arteta & Co.

By the 70-30 blend, they ranked as the 23rd-best attack in Europe coming into this weekend: 1.68 per game.

Again, they’re definitely better than 23rd once you factor in league difficulty, but both of their starting center forwards are injured and it’s still unclear if their superstar, Bukayo Saka, is back to 100% after recently returning from injury. At best, I’d say they’re as good as Inter Milan on offense, and I probably wouldn’t even go that far:

Among the last 10 Champions League winners, only 2021 Chelsea took home the title with a mix of above-average attack and elite defense. It definitely can happen, but the modern profile of the European champion looks a lot more like the other three teams.

Paris Saint-Germain

Why they will win:They’re good at everything — unlike everyone else who’s left

Let’s quickly run through a number of top-level statistical markers and see where PSG rank across the Big Five leagues:

• Adjusted goals: 2.69 per game, first
• Adjusted goals against: 0.97, ninth
• Final-third possession: 71.3%, third
• Passes allowed per defensive action (PPDA): 8.33, first

So, they’re the best attacking team in the world, they’re an elite defensive unit, they control the flow of the game, and they press their opponents off the field.

Yes, they’re doing that in Ligue 1, a league where many clubs have payrolls smaller than the salaries of various PSG players. But we’ve already seen this approach work against Liverpool, the best team in the most competitive league in the world.

Since manager Luis Enrique moved Ousmane Dembélé to center forward midway through the season and integrated Khvicha Kvaratskhelia into the starting 11 from Napoli, they’re been the hottest and most consistent club team in the world.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Arteta/Pep Guardiola tactical phase that many of the top teams have entered into: the demand for total control, bigger bodies and a desire to eliminate as much risk as possible in your play. Not only do I not love watching it, I’m still not really convinced it’s the optimal way to try to win games at the highest level.

Perhaps that’s how Premier League teams have to play with the bloated match schedule to stay healthy — but PSG play in a way that embraces risk, leverages world-class talent to handle the uncertainty and attempts to bury the opposition under a swarming press and an avalanche of chances.

Among every team left, PSG are the least likely of the three to leave an individual match thinking that their opponent created the better opportunities.

Why they won’t win:The defense could fall apart

There has been an interesting mini-development this year, with both PSG and Liverpool. They’re teams that press high and want to dominate the flow of their matches. But they also allow an oddly high number of touches inside their own penalty area.

Usually, pressing teams stifle penalty-area entries for the opposition in raw total — they just give up a small number of high-quality opportunities. But both teams gave up what I’d characterize as a just-slightly-better-than-average number of box touches for their opponents. Liverpool gave up 20.48 (29th-fewest in Europe), and PSG conceded 18.35, 19th-fewest in Europe despite utterly dominating Ligue 1.

What happened and why did this work for both teams? Each became comfortable with letting opponents into their attacking third when the press failed. They trusted in their elite goalkeepers and fantastic center backs to make plays, and by doing so, they also opened up some more space on the other end for the occasional counterattack.

This is its own kind of risk, even if it never really shows up in the goals allowed column. Liverpool hasn’t had a bad defensive game in the Premier League this season, but they gave up a ton of opportunities to … PSG, whose dynamic forwards actually took advantage of all of the penalty-area possession. Arsenal, Barcelona and Inter Milan are three teams that could do the same to PSG.

Barcelona

Why they will win:Their highest gear is higher than everyone else’s

Since the European Cup became the Champions League in the early 1990s, only five teams have scored four goals or more in at least five matches.

The most recent: the 2021-22 Manchester City side that won the treble and have a strong claim as the greatest team in English soccer history. Before that, it was the 2017-18 Liverpool side that made the Champions League final, won the Champions League the next season, and won the Premier League the year after that.

They both scored four-plus goals five different times, but 2013-14 Real Madrid did it in six matches. Although they finished third in LaLiga, no one cared — they won the sought-after La Decima, Madrid’s 10th European Cup and first in over a decade. And the only other club to hit four six times was 1999-2000 Barcelona, who lost in the semifinals to Valencia. Their front line featured Rivaldo, the defending Ballon d’Or winner, and Luis Figo, who would win the next Ballon d’Or after the season ended.

So, that’s two of the best English sides ever, the start-of-a-new-dynasty Real Madrid, and a team with Rivaldo and Figo (and three eventual Barcelona managers, Pep Guardiola, Xavi, and Luis Enrique).

The fifth team to reach four goals or more at least five times? It’s this season’s Barcelona, who still have at least two and potentially three more games to go.

Thanks to manager Hansi Flick’s aggressive press, a borderline-comical high line, arguably the best player in the world in Raphinha, arguably the best midfielder in the world in Pedri, inarguably the best young player in the world in Lamine Yamal, and inarguably the best goal scorer of his generation in Robert Lewandowski, this team can pour it on like no one else in Europe.

In league play, they’ve generated four-plus non-penalty expected goals in three games. Arsenal have done it once. Neither PSG nor Inter Milan have done it.

Most clubs meet the occasional matchup or confluence of circumstances that makes it really hard for the attack to click. But that really doesn’t happen to Barcelona. They attempt the third-most shots of any team in Europe and they create the third-best shots (as measured by xG per shot of any team in Europe). Elite in both chance creation and quality, the Barcelona attack almost always finds a way.

Why they won’t win:Robert Lewandowski is injured

If you’ve paid any attention to Barcelona, you know that their high line is both their strength and their weakness. I wrote about it before the quarterfinals. By leveraging so many players forward, they’re able to create as many chances as they do. By that also leads to them conceding the fourth-worst shots (again, by xG per shot) of any team in Europe.

If someone beats Barcelona, it’ll probably be because they created a few more of those inevitably high-quality chances than the Catalan club usually concedes.

But this is by design. Flick wants his team to play this way — he’s making a bet that this approach will lead to more points over the long haul, even if it coughs up a couple of embarrassing comebacks along the way.

So, is there any other way that Barcelona will lose? Well, Lewandowski has sat out their past two matches because of a hamstring injury, and he’s expected to sit out at least the first leg against Inter.

Barca won both of the games without him, but the attack wasn’t quite as fluid. Across all competitions this season, they’re averaging 0.14 xG per shot. But against Mallorca, that dropped to 0.09, and then it fell even lower, down to 0.08, against Real Madrid.

They still ended up creating enough shots to win each match, but what happens once the Lewandowski-less attack is matched up against a top-tier defense? We’ll find out soon.

Inter Milan

Why they will win:They can play every way

Arsenal need to play slow — whether they have the ball or let the other team control it. PSG will try to pin you back and beat you with possession. Barcelona will press high, pass vertically, and blow you off the field. And Simone Inzaghi’s Inter will do … whatever the situation demands of them.

With three pass-first midfielders, two strikers, two aggressive wingbacks, and one uber-aggressive center back, Inter are capable of lighting up a scoreboard and keeping things pinned up in the attacking third. But they can just as easily drop the fullbacks back, ask Alessandro Bastoni to stop making runs wherever he wants, and try to attack on the counter with Lisandro Martínez and Marcus Thuram.

Inter press way less aggressively than any of the three remaining teams, and they’re significantly easier to complete passes against. Despite that, they’re still outscoring their opponents in Serie A by over a goal per game.

Their ability to dominate games without controlling the ball seems like a particularly good matchup against a Barcelona side that are going to put players forward and then leave a ton of space for the Italian side to attack on the counter.

Their tactical structure, too, seems as if it might provide some avenues through Barca’s high line. Too often this season, teams will just have attackers stand on the back shoulder of Barcelona’s defenders and wait for a ball over the top. The problems with this are twofold:

First, you’re not getting a running start, so even if a ball gets played, Barcelona’s defenders are given an equal opportunity to track it down. Second, you’re seeing the same triggers that Barcelona’s defenders are. While you’re getting ready to run in behind from a long ball, the defenders can cue on any pass-is-coming giveaways (a player looks down at the ball, winds up, etc.) and either step up and draw you offside or drop to track down the long ball.

With two forwards, though, Inter can have one player start high and then drop deep while another makes a run in behind from deeper. This stresses the positional discipline of the center backs and it also gives the attacker a running start against an immobile defender. And the same thing goes for the wing backs. Since they’re starting from deeper than wingers usually do, they can make slightly delayed runs in behind where they build up a head of steam and the midfielders just have to time the pass with their run.

Though Inter don’t match up quite well against Arsenal or PSG, the final is only one match. And though they didn’t match up well against Manchester City in the final two seasons ago, they outplayed the eventual winners for significant portions of the match.

Why they won’t win:They don’t have the same talent as everyone else

This is a somewhat subjective claim, of course, but various estimates back it up. Per FBref’s estimated wages, Inter have the lowest wage bill among any of the semifinalists, by $40-plus million. Per Transfermarkt’s estimated transfer values, Inter’s squad is worth €663.8 million, while PSG, Arsenal, and Barcelona are all north of €900 million. The latter two are both above €1 billion.

Weighted by minutes played in the Champions League, the average age of Inter’s squad is 30.2 — oldest in the competition. Arsenal are all the way down at 26.7, while Barcelona (25.9) and PSG (24.9) are even younger. Soccer players tend to peak between the ages of 24 and 28. So, the average Inter player is two years past his peak, and they’re matched up against three groups of uber-expensive, super-valuable players mostly in their peak years.

Now, I do think those numbers oversell the talent gap between Inter and everyone else. Bastoni, Martínez, Thuram, and Nicolò Barella would make any team better. But the reality is that Arsenal, Barcelona and PSG all brought in twice the amount of revenue as Inter did last year, and as long as you’re not Manchester United, that money makes it a lot easier to build bigger and better squads.

The question for the next round and beyond, then: Can Inter’s tactical flexibility overcome the talent gap they’ll face against Barcelona and whomever they might play in the final?