YMMV / The Champions (2018)

• Awesome Ego: Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic
• Crosses the Line Twice: In the fourth episode of season 3, Neymar misguidedly tries to appease his PSG teammates with a French-themed party based on every stereotype about France he could dig up, with the decoration including a candle in the shape of the Notre Dame cathedral — which had been severely damaged by a fire seven months before the episode aired.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • The rivalry between Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp plays out a lot like this in their paintball faceoff in episode 5. Jose Mourinho even sticks his nose into it like a true Crazy Jealous Guy, after complaining to the Confession Cam about how overrated Klopp is and how his rivalry with Guardiola is more important.
  • The dinner Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have in season 3 episode 3 is dripping with this on Ronaldo's part. While Messi is rather ambivalent about having to have dinner with his rival, Ronaldo's reaction to the invitation is not unlike that of a teenage girl getting asked out by her crush.
• Genius Bonus: It can take a lot of knowledge of the Champions League's recent history (and European football in general) to catch some of the more subtle jokes in the series.
  • Kyle Walker's blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in the penultimate episode of season 3, where he is hanging out in the same bar as the outfield-player-hating Goalkeepers Union, makes sense when you realize Walker played keeper for Manchester City a few weeks prior to the episode airing.
  • Zinedine Zidane mentioning that he started going to anger management and that it has now been 14 years, 9 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days since his last headbutt. That’s the amount of time between the 2006 World Cup final and the premiere date of the second episode of season 5.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Iker Casillas' My Name Is Inigo Montoya act in the 2019 knockout stage draw short, particularly the last line of "Prepare to die," became this after Casillas suffered a heart attack a few months after the short aired.
  • During Barcelona's musical performance in the Season 2 finale, Gerard Piqué was visibly angered by Shakira kissing Leo Messi's football puppet. Three years later, Shakira and Piqué announced their separation after she reportedly caught him cheating on her with another woman.
  • In general, the final episode of season 3 joking about the end of the world by meteor strike (and the subsequent football-related chaos that emerges from it) seems rather quaint after the world (and almost all football competitions, including the Champions League) was locked down due to a pandemic of a highly-contagious disease. The full trailer for season 4 lampshades this coincidence, describing the series as "the show that perfectly predicted 2020."
  • The Season 5 finale has a tagline where Hans-Dieter Flick jokes about "clearing out his desk" as he had resigned as Bayern Munich manager to take the same position for the German national team. This turned out to be an Ironic Echo as two years later, after a string of poor international results including failure to make it out of the 2022 World Cup Group stage and struggling at the Euro qualifiers, Flick was sacked as Germany manager.
  • In the 2022 knockout stage draw short, Benfica's Nicolas Otamendi says "Come on everyone! Let's all laugh at Barcelona!" The day the short aired, Otamendi and his family were robbed and assaulted at their home. Two days later, Barca's Sergio Aguero announced his retirement due to a cardiac condition brought on by an arrhythmia that he suffered earlier in the season.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In the first season, Gerard Piqué notices that Messi has been feeling down since losing the 2018 World Cup, and acknowledges that Messi might be realizing he will never win a World Cup for Argentina. Four years later, Argentina finally won the World Cup with Messi scoring two goals and a penalty to win Man of the Match, capping an already outstanding international career with football's biggest honor.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Bayern Munich Oktoberfest party sees then-1899 Hoffenheim manager Julian Nagelsmann prevented from entering due to his youthful complexion. Three years later, Nagelsmann would turn the tables after being appointed as the next Bayern manager.
  • Christian Pulisic's season 2 tagline has him express relief over his then-upcoming transfer to Chelsea, since he was about to win trophies at Dortmund, which would've been against the ethos of the United States men's national team. Over two years later, Pulisic would finally win trophies with both squads - participating in Chelsea's triumph in the 2021 Champions League Final, then less than a week later scoring the winning goal for the US over Mexico in the final of the CONCACAF Nations League.
  • In season 2, it is revealed that the reason Gareth Bale doesn't fit in with his Real Madrid teammates is because he's an alien. 2 years after the episode aired, Bale would give an interview where he admitted he believes in the existence of aliens.
  • In the Season 2 Episode 4 intro taglines, Isco expresses optimism for Zinedine Zidane returning to coach Real Madrid. Isco would fall out of favor with Zidane, losing playing time, eventually transferring to Sevilla, before being released after a falling-out with the sporting director and left without a club for months before joining Sevilla's cross-town rivals Real Betis.
  • In season 2, Luis Suárez notes that it might be odd for him to be in "Fightlético", Diego Simeone's underground fight club, while not being an Atlético de Madrid player, but he likes to have a safe space for violence. Over a year after the episode aired, Suárez left Barcelona... to sign with Atlético.
  • Happens to Bayern Munich twice in the knockout stage shorts.
    • The 2019 short has Thomas Mueller hoping that the team wins the Champions League because "we're not winning Bundesliga" thanks to being significantly behind in the league's standings when it aired. While Bayern failed to win that year's Champions League, they ultimately made up their deficit in their domestic standings and won the Bundesliga on the last day of the season.
    • The 2020 short has Philippe Coutinho comment on Liverpool's success the previous year and Barcelona's momentum that season as proof of teams succeeding after he left them - but ultimately it would be Coutinho and Bayern with the last laugh as they rolled to that year's Champions League title, with a 8-2 rout of the aformentioned Barcelona in the quarterfinals along the way.
  • In the first episode of season 3, Joao Felix points out that he is happy to be in a club that "has a chance to make it out of the group stage". Flash forward to 2-3 years, and not only Benfica have proven to be a tough team by reaching the knock out stage for 2 consecutive years in very hard groups (First one had Barcelona and Bayern Munich, the second PSG and Juventus), but Atlético have finished last in a group that was considered relatively easy for them (Porto, Bayer Leverkusen, and Club Brugge, respected teams indeed, but rarely thought of as comparable to the "Colchoneros"). Felix however would be loaned to Chelsea shortly afterward, allowing him to play in the knockouts again.
  • In the Season 3 finale, Jose Mourinho assures Harry Kane that Tottenham is in a better position than Manchester United and that they have three whole years before things fall apart, by which then Kane will be long gone. Less than 16 months later, Manchester United was ahead of Tottenham in the Premier League table and in contention for a 2021-22 Champions League spot while Mourinho would be sacked from Tottenham with Kane still there.
  • At the season 4 premiere, Mauricio Pochettino appeared in the intro to remind us that he still existed and would like a job. Less than two months later, he was hired as Paris Saint-Germain's new manager.
  • Manchester United's Mason Greenwood panicking at the idea of returning to the Europa League House in season 4... only for the team to finish third in the group stage and go back to Europa League anyway.
  • In the Europa House episode, Brendan Rodgers predicts that Ansu Fati would end up like the previous "Next Messi", Bojan: struggling to find playing time, then being sold to a Portuguese Club with a buyback clause that would never be triggered. Less than three years later, Fati would struggle for playing time under Xavi and be loaned to an English club, Brighton, without an option to buy.
  • In the second episode of Season 5, Jose Mourinho introduces his anger management class by saying that he suddenly has a lot of time on his hands. A day after the episode premiered, Mourinho would be named the new coach of AS Roma.
  • In both Seasons 4 and 5, Jadon Sancho's failed transfer to Manchester United is brought up, first by Marcus Rashford, then by Sancho himself and Paul Pogba. During the 2021 summer transfer window, Sancho finally made his move to the Red Devils. Adding further hilarity is the fact that the second episode this is referenced, Erling Haaland points out that until he is sold, he and Sancho are still strike partners after spending most of the episode having his loyalty to Dortmund called into question by joining the Expensive AF FC club. Haaland would stay in Dortmund for one more year after Sancho left, before joining Manchester City in 2022.
  • A number of points in Cristiano Ronaldo's ranting and insults in the season 5 finale aged poorly in the subsequent year afterward. To wit:
    • His potshot at Lionel Messi's lack of trophies when playing for Argentina was rendered moot not even two months later after Messi led Argentina to victory in the 2021 Copa America.
    • Ronaldo throws another jab at Messi for "stay[ing] in one place" for all of his career... and again, this was just months before Messi shockingly left Barcelona for Paris Saint-Germain.
    • Earlier in the same episode, Ronaldo mocks Alphonso Davies' TikToks before sarcastically wishing him luck qualifying for the FIFA World Cup with Canada (which hadn't qualified for a WC in over 35 years at the time of the episode's upload). Nearly a year later, Canada would be the first North American team to qualify for the 2022 World Cup.
    • His rundown of his former Real Madrid teammates got even funnier a year later, as many of those same players would lead Real to a La Liga and Champions League double in 2022.
  • In the 2023 Knockout Stage Short, Napoli's Khvicha Kvaratskhelia says "Who needs Maradona when you have... Kvaradona?" Kvara would play a key role in bringing Napoli their first Scudetto since the 1989-90 Napoli team, led by Maradona. Kvara would further take home some significant hardware, including Serie A MVP and UCL Young Player of the Season.
  • A couple moments in the "Champions of the World" Special became this during the 2022 World Cup:
    • Belgium’s chocolate car running out of fuel and then melting under the Qatar heat became a a hilariously symbolic representation of the heavily favored Belgian team and their “Golden Generation” failing to make it out of the group stage.
    • Luis Suarez catching up with the Ghanaian National Team, mentioning he hasn't seen them since 2010 and sarcastically offering them a "hand", a reference to his controversial handball that knocked them out in the 2010 World Cup, became even more hilarious when Ghana eliminated Uruguay in the Group Stage, with Suarez himself sobbing on the bench.
    • England not being invited to the World Cup Favorites Party becomes funnier when all but two of the teams that were included, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Senegal (who England knocked out in the Round of 16), Portugal, the Netherlands, and Brazil bowed out before or at the same time as them. Adding further hilarity was the fact that Brazil, who hosted the party, fell to a much weaker Croatia squad while England fell to the tournament favorite France, both in the quarterfinal. Even the United States made it further than Germany, Belgium, and Canada, and lost in the same round as Senegal.
  • One of the arcs of Season 7 had Neymar accepting an invite from Cristiano Ronaldo (actually Kylian Mbappe) to play in Saudi Arabia. Less than a month later, Neymar would agree to terms to play for Al-Hilal.
  • In a non-The Champions work example, 442oons joked that Mikhaylo Mudryk turned down a spot in Season 5 of The Frontmen to be part of The Champions, with his 442oons cartoon likeness superimposed in the B/R Football "The Champions of the World" Youtube graphic. While technically true, Mudryk's involvement thus far hasn't been as prominent as the former predicted, as his appearances have been one tagline in Kylian Mbappe's reboot where he bemoans signing an eight year contract, as well as a brief cameo when Erling Haaland shoots open a door of surplus Chelsea players where he and a group of other players fall out.