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your choice is very right and the most important thing is that the main candidates to reach the final round are only Liverpool and Leverkusen who are currently considered very strong in the european league this season and I will not ignore Milan even though this team is also very consistent but it seems very difficult if In the quarter finals, Milan had to compete against Leverkusen and Liverpool, which would be a big disaster for Milan and the opportunity to reach the final would be more difficult if they had competed against one of the two strongest teams in the quarter finals.
Very strong teams in the cup have made it to the last 16 and are already scaring their opponents. In my opinion, the favorites for the cup are Liverpool, Leverkusen and Milan. There may be surprises in football and no one can be sure of the outcome, but still the level of these teams is higher than other teams. Maybe they will care more about the matches in their domestic league and will not show much interest in the matches in this cup. If such a thing happens, there may be unexpected teams among the teams that pass the tour.
Especially after the last 16 rounds, the performance of all teams increases and the team can be motivated in a different way. These motivations can lead to matches being played harder and being prone to surprising results.
It can be said that Milan is the team with the most ambition to win the Europa League trophy this season, because in Series A it is no longer possible for Pioli fleet to overtake Inter at the top of the standings. Liverpool has a good chance of winning the Premier League trophy, While Leverkusen also has a big chance of winning the Bundesliga trophy. But overall, Winning two or three titles in one season is the ambition of all teams.
Liverpool, Leverkusen and Milan really deserve to be favorites, but we also can't ignore the chances of the other contestants. Several teams that have difficulty finishing in the UCL zone in their respective domestic leagues will try their best to win the Europa League Trophy and get tickets to appear in the UCL next season. this background is what I think is very interesting, but I agree that the European League presents more unexpected surprises.
On the other hand, we can see one of the surprises in the play off round yesterday, I didn't expect Galatasaray to be eliminated by Sparta Prague. Does not rule out the possibility that the three favorite teams will be eliminated first in the quarter finals or semi finals, but if we refer to their consistency in the domestic league, Liverpool and Leverkusen are ideal to become finalists this season.