The Group stage is often a dog’s breakfast and even the Round of 16 frequently sees some bad clubs win through, but the Champions League Quarterfinals is definitely where it all starts getting interesting and we’re set for four excellent fixtures.
Spurs play City a thousand times within the next fortnight and reignite the rivalry in London first-up on Wednesday, April 10th, before Liverpool attempt to remain on track for their first piece of real silverware for years. United host Barcelona and Juventus travel to the Amsterdam.
Champions League tips for Leg 1 of the Quarterfinals are available below.
Wednesday Morning (April 10)
Manchester City clearly boast one of the best rosters in the world, but they really haven’t been able to put it all together on the European stage. This is clearly their best chance to date and the sigh of relief from the Cityzens could be heard, even on this side of the world when they drew Spurs in the quarters. You don’t even have to look back at the Premier League ladder and results to see how much better City have been than Tottenham – one loss in the group stage and a 7-0 thrashing of Schalke in the second leg of their Round of 16 tie three weeks ago is all the proof I need to back them again.
It’s a huge win for England to have all four qualified clubs in the final eight of the Champions League and I think that the Reds are a huge chance of winning through the semis again. Porto have played out of their skin this season and will be quietly confident of a longer run after muscling out Roma, but this really is a step up in class for Sergio Conceicao’s men and you’d think that they’d need to muster a club-best performance to win at Anfield first-up. They only finished a couple of points below that stacked PSG team in the pool stage and knocking out Bayern is monstrous. Happy to be with them at home.
Thursday Morning (April 11)
This is where is starts getting really hard for the Premier League clubs. Manchester United have drawn a Barcelona side that hasn’t really lived up to their potential this season, but it’s still bloody Barcelona. If they turn it on, they could win this by five and field the under 20s for the second leg. United have locked down Solskjaer (as if they were going to do anything else) and their form under the Norwegian has been outstanding. They really need to be winning this leg if they are any chance of progressing but I’m happy to sit on the fence and take the value that’s on offer for the draw.
Given the form showed by the former and the standing of the latter for a long time in Europe, this actually looks like being the best of the four quarterfinal brackets. The Dutch champions won passage through to the knockout stage after finishing second behind Bayern in the wide-open Group E, but it was their thrilling performance in the second leg against Real Madrid that stamped them as a serious threat. Juventus breezed through the Group stage and reversed a two-goal deficit against Atletico Madrid in the Round of 16. A repeat of that effort would see them extremely difficult to beat again.