Inter Milan must be taken into account in the competition for trophies, their increasing performance makes them very difficult to stop. The defeat in last season's final has shaped Inter Milan into a team that is better prepared to face all the challenges this season. Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Real Madrid must be more alert when they meet Inter Milan because Simone Inzaghi's troops could make them go home sooner than expected. These four teams always appear consistently in the domestic league, if they make it to the semifinals it will create an ideal final this season.
Inter has been respected because they were runner up in the last season and they have an outstanding performance in their domestic league recently. So Inter will become a strong contender in this season.
In terms of consistency, Real Madrid is more consistent among other teams. I'm not referring to consistent for owning the most UCL's trophy, but the recent performance in domestic league.
But last season's semi-final was an unexpected stroke of luck where they didn't face a club that was really troublesome for them even though it was a big match but they faced a club from the same league in the domestic competition so that made it easier for them because they could know what the habits of the opponent were but this season they still might not be able to achieve that because in the end it depends on the club they play against too actually.
At the moment, Inter are still quite favored because they will fight Real Sociedad which in fact is a club with the status of a dark horse at the moment but that also does not mean Inter will win easily because in the end this is just talking about probability and at the moment their probability is quite large when compared to Sociedad, but it does not rule out the possibility of unexpected surprises like the previous few seasons in the Champions League sometimes there are some unexpected surprises including last season where Inter became semi-finalists because it was a surprise that could not be expected before.