Now the jeopardy really kicks in for the Champions League with a title chase, pride and hard cash on the line.

At least four former European champions will be among eight teams eliminated when the new knockout playoff round ends this week.

Real Madrid or Manchester City, Bayern Munich or Celtic, AC Milan or Feyenoord and PSV Eindhoven or Juventus.

Their European seasons will be over in February before even reaching the round of 16 that teams like Madrid and Man City, who meet in their second-leg game Wednesday, have come to expect.

Indeed, City coach Pep Guardiola has never failed in 16 seasons of coaching — four at Barcelona, three at Bayern and nine in Manchester — to take his team to the round of 16 in the Champions League.

Advancing to the last-16 is worth 11 million euros ($11.5 million) in prize money from UEFA. While that pays just a few months of salary for Kylian Mbappé or Erling Haaland, it is a path toward a bigger share of the 2.5 billion euros ($2.6 billion) total prize fund shared by 36 teams that started in the league phase in September.

It took 152 games so far in the new expanded format — already 21% more than the entire 125-game competition in each of the past 21 seasons — just to reach this stage.

The business end of the Champions League arguably only starts now, with 37 games left through the May 31 final in Munich.