Soccer's 2025-26 Watchability rankings, from Bayern Munich to Wolves
The Premier League has been a little boring at times this season, but there's brilliant, must-see soccer all over Europe if you know where to look. So check out our latest Watchability Rankings!
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One of the major storylines of the 2025-26 European soccer campaign has been how the best league in the world, the Premier League, has a bit of a boringness problem. Open-play scoring is down -- hell, the amount of time the ball is in play is down -- and has been replaced by meat walls, long throw-ins and all sorts of functional, but aesthetically unpleasant, actions.
So does that mean soccer as a whole is going through a more stolid, cruddy-to-watch period? Hell no! It just means you just have to watch other leagues!
The Champions League knockout rounds have featured a run of incredible matches, Hansi Flick's Barcelona are attempting the same high-wire act as ever, and Flick's former team, Bayern -- the inspiration for the first Watchability rankings and the three-time winners of the Watchability crown -- have laid waste to their own Bundesliga scoring record.
Real Madrid are as flawed and wide open as ever, PSG are playing increasingly sexy ball, RB Leipzig have found the gas pedal again, a transformed Lens team continue to ride PSG's bumper close in Ligue 1, and even dark arts master Diego Simeone has opened up his Atletico Madrid team's play quite a bit. Atletico vs. Barca matches have been must-watch -- and we've gotten a lot of them -- and last week's Bayern vs. Real Madrid match in the Champions League quarterfinal was a reminder of everything this sport can be. If you're bored with soccer right now, it's your own damn fault. Branch out a little.
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For years now, I've been tinkering with a way to apply numbers to aesthetics, using a combination of stats that measure quality, scoring prowess, defensive intensity, verticality, switches, through-balls, match tension, openness against good teams and, as of last year, how interesting you are when you're behind. It's time to unveil this season's Watchability rankings.
Links for previous seasons
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The most watchable matches in Europe to date
A couple of years ago, I began applying a similar algorithm to individual matches to look at the most entertaining single games of a given year. Here's this season's top 20 to date from Europe's Big Five leagues and UEFA competitions, and one thing stands out: the Champions League knockout rounds have delivered.
1. UEFA Champions League: Real Madrid 2-1 Manchester City, March 17. I guess this one needs a "Real Madrid held a three-goal lead from the first leg" caveat, but with City forced to hit the gas at home -- and with City playing down for 70 minutes after Bernardo Silva's red card -- this game was as wide open as any all season. City attempted 22 shots, but got predictably carved up by Real Madrid's lethal counterattack, and the Blancos were unlucky to score only twice. A really fun, if not particularly high-jeopardy, matchup.
2. German Bundesliga: Bayern Munich 5-1 RB Leipzig, Jan. 17. This one was as close as a 5-1 game can be. Bayern were flirting with being a little too wide open at this point in the schedule, and RB Leipzig took an early lead with a goal from Rômulo. It was still tied into the 67th minute when Bayern pulled off one of the combinations only they seem capable of: They scored in the 67th, 82nd, 85th and 88th minutes, and easily won with 36 combined shots and 7.1 combined xG.
3. Spanish LaLiga: Real Madrid 3-2 Atletico Madrid, Mar. 22. Amid a big run of great Atleti vs. Barca matches came this delight. Ademola Lookman gave Atletico an early lead in the Bernabeu, then the teams combined for four goals (three from Real Madrid, two from Vinícius Júnior) in a wacky 21-minute span. A late Fede Valverde red card made things tense for the hosts, but they held on in a delightfully direct affair.
4. UEFA Champions League: Atletico Madrid 3-3 Club Brugge, Feb. 18. We should have gotten rid of the away goals rule decades earlier. Instead of cautious, paranoid first legs in the Champions League knockout rounds, we instead got scores like 5-2, 6-1, 3-3, 3-2 and 3-1 in the knockout phase playoffs, and 5-2, 5-2, 6-1, 3-0 and 3-0 in the round of 16. The most watchable of the bunch evidently happened in Bruges, where Atletico took a 2-0 lead into halftime before Brugge charged back to tie. An own goal gave Ateti another lead, but Christos Tzolis tied it again in the 89th minute. The second leg was pretty tight, too, until Atletico finally pulled away in the last 15 minutes.
5. UEFA Champions League: Bayern Munich 4-3 Real Madrid, April 15. Honestly, the only surprise is that this didn't rank first.
6. German Bundesliga: RB Leipzig 2-1 Augsburg, Mar. 7. Only poor finishing kept this one from lighting up the scoreboard. The teams combined for 33 shots worth 5.4 xG, and Augsburg led for much of the way until Yan Diomande tied things up for RBL in the 76th minute and a stoppage-time own goal gave the home team the win.
7. UEFA Champions League: Barcelona 3-3 Club Brugge, Nov. 5. If this year's Champions League was any indication, we should have made Club Brugge temporary LaLiga members. They'd have threatened for a top-four finish, and they'd have ramped up the entertainment value significantly.
8. German Bundesliga: Bayer Leverkusen 3-1 RB Leipzig, Dec. 20. RBL had three of the top eight matches, but won only one. Goals from Martin Terrier and Patrik Schick late in the first half gave Bayer Leverkusen a 2-1 lead, and while RBL assaulted Mark Flekken's goal in the second half, Leverkusen put the match away with a late goal from 18-year-old Montrell Culbreath.
9. French Ligue 1: Marseille 3-2 Lyon, March 1. The fourth March match on the list! One of France's most bitter rivalries produced a delightful track meet here. Lyon led for 54 total minutes, but Marseille came back from a pair of deficits and seized all three points when Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored in the 81st and 91st minutes.
10. German Bundesliga: Bayern Munich 5-1 Hoffenheim, Feb. 8. No one does fun blowout wins like Bayern. Despite an early red card, Hoffenheim tied this match up at 1-1 late in the first half before the inevitable Bayern charge. Harry Kane and Luis Díaz both scored late in the first half, then Diaz scored twice more in the second. Bayern attempted 27 shots worth 6.0 xG!
The rest of the top 20
11. French Ligue 1: PSG 3-3 Strasbourg, Oct. 17 12. Spanish LaLiga: Girona 2-1 Barcelona, Feb. 16 13. German Bundesliga: Bayern Munich 3-2 Freiburg, April 4 14. UEFA Conference League: AEK Athens 3-2 Universitatea Craiova, Dec. 18 15. German Bundesliga: Borussia Dortmund 3-2 Hoffenheim, Feb. 1 16. English Premier League: Manchester United 3-2 Burnley, Aug. 30 17. German Bundesliga: Bayer Leverkusen 3-3 Freiburg, March 7 18. Spanish LaLiga: Real Madrid 2-2 Elche, Nov. 23 19. UEFA Champions League: Borussia Dortmund 2-2 Bodø/Glimt, Dec. 10 20. Spanish LaLiga: Atletico Madrid 3-2 Rayo Vallecano, Sept. 24
The most watchable teams in Europe's Big Five leagues to date
Let's be honest: You already know who the top two teams on this list are going to be. It was just a question of who would be No. 1.
1. Bayern München (9.6). Granted, Bayern are still aiming for bigger trophies this spring -- with the Bundesliga already in the bag, they still have a shot at the DFB Pokal and Champions League trophies -- but they are now four-time Watchability champions despite the fact that only 64% of their possessions have come with a match within one goal, by far the lowest percentage of any team here. And the reason is pretty self-explanatory.
This genuinely might be the best attack that soccer has ever seen. That's generally a pretty watchable thing.
2. Barcelona (9.6). They have one of the most disruptive defenses in the sport, they allow by far the fewest passes per opponent possession, and they draw far more offsides than anyone else. With both Raphinha and Robert Lewandowski contributing far less than they did a year ago, their attack is merely very good -- scoring only two goals in 180 minutes led to defeat against Atletico in the Champions League quarterfinals, after all -- but every second you watch Barca, you know this is a Hansi Flick team.
3. Real Madrid (9.5). With their random defensive breakdowns (spurred at least in part by a shakier-than-usual midfield), you could easily say that Real Madrid have been a little too fun and watchable this season. But their loss in that regard is our gain. They played in three of the top five games in the list above, and while both Kylian Mbappé and Jude Bellingham have missed quite a bit of time to injury, Arda Güler's creativity and bursts from Vini Jr. and Fede Valverde have kept them potent.
4. PSG (9.5). I can't imagine a Luis Enrique team ever ranking too low on the Watchability scale, and giving him players like Khvicha Kvaratshkelia, Ousmane Dembélé, Vitinha, Désiré Doué, Bradley Barcola and Achraf Hakimi is almost unfair. PSG's attention span has been a bit spotty this year -- understandable after last season's Champions League breakthrough win -- but it would surprise no one if they finished the job and ended up as back-to-back European champs.
5. RB Leipzig (9.5). This club's job is to produce great young talent and play high-octane ball. They did far less of either than usual last season, but new additions Yan Diomande (19) and Romulo (24) have combined for 20 league goals and 10 assists, and RBL are back to playing prolific and intense ball. They'll almost certainly be back in the Champions League next season, too.
