Champions of Europe
▶ Real Madrid absence throws UCL wide open
The UEFA Champions League quarterfinals get underway in the coming weeks with past winners and relative newcomers to the European elite gunning for the biggest prize in club football. Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City are the only two teams among the last eight never to have lifted the famous trophy as either the Champions League or when it was the European Cup.
Both sides have a chance to make history this season. City, backed by the Abu Dhabi royal family, have had their sights on becoming champions of Europe since the owners took over and have recruited for that very task.
Manager
Pep Guardiola has won the trophy before when he was at Barcelona and his City side
are cast much in the same image as that all-conquering Camp Nou team and Bayern Munich since and are looking to emulate the Barcelona team by winning four trophies this season.
Free-scoring City’s intent was there for all to see in their 10-2 aggregate win over Germany’s Schalke 04 in the last round, with the second leg a 7-0 procession at the Etihad.
Opportunity
Spurs present a trickier prospect than foreign opposition, though, with ties between teams of the same domestic leagues often ending unpredictably.
The London side only have the Champions League to play for having dropped out of the English Premier League title race and a trophy of some sort would match the ambitions of the club that are laid bare in their brandnew stadium.
It would also help them to lose the “Spursy” tag that has become shorthand for falling at the last, whether that is in individual games or over the course of a season, and perhaps more importantly stop some of their current crop of players (or manager Mauricio Pochettino) from agitating for a move.
This is Spurs’ second time in the quarterfinals and they will want to make a first semifinal, while City lost to Liverpool at this stage last season and will want to reach only their second semifinal.
Porto against Liverpool is another game that we saw last season and the Merseyside club were handsome winners over two legs in the round of 16.
That finished 5-0 on aggregate after a 5-0 thrashing for the Portuguese side at the Estadio do Dragao, a result that won’t have been forgotten and will provide motivation for both sides as they look to become European champions once again.
Jurgen Klopp is yet to win a major trophy with Liverpool but the former Borussia Dortmund coach took the Bundesliga outfit to the final in 2013 and Liverpool to last season’s showpiece.
Distractions
This season Klopp’s men are also battling it out with City for the Premier League title and the Champions League could prove a distraction as they chase a first league title for 29 years.
It’s a similar story in Portugal where Porto and Benfica are neck and neck at the top of the table, with the Lisbon side having their own distraction in the form of the Europa League. It is 15 years since Porto won the Champions League under Jose Mourinho but revenge for last year will be as motivating as trying to follow in the footsteps of the club’s greatest-ever success.
Despite their illustrious continental pedigree, there were not many people expecting to see Ajax in the quarterfinals, not least because they lost the first leg of their last-16 tie to the champions Real Madrid.
But Erik ten Hag’s young side overcame the 2-1 deficit to romp to a 4-1 win at the Bernabeu.
Real Madrid’s chance to win a fourth Champions League in a row may have ended but their former striker Cristiano Ronaldo’s personal quest to do so is very much alive.
The Juventus man scored a hat trick to overcome Atletico Madrid in the last round, his three unanswered second leg goals in Turin overturning the Spanish side’s 2-0 first-leg victory.
This season’s final is in Atletico’s Wanda Metropolitano stadium and it seems Ronaldo is intent on returning to Madrid in June to claim a trophy that he sees as his. With the Serie A title almost wrapped up, the Bianconeri can focus on finally going one better than in their two final losses in the last four years. It’s a record that Ronaldo was signed as the man to end and he is delivering so far.
Unpredictability
If Ajax and Juventus making it through was against the odds, then Manchester United were written off – no team had won through after losing the first leg 2-0 at home in 106 attempts.
A penalty from Marcus Rashford sealed a 3-1 win and took them through to a first quarterfinal since David Moyes’ ill-fated season in charge. The fans will expect Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side to put up a better fight than that meek surrender against Bayern Munich, even if their reward for beating Paris SaintGermain was a tie with Barcelona.
The two clubs have a long history with one another. In two of the last three times that the Catalans won it was by beating United in the final, while the last two times that United lifted the trophy it was in seasons that they met Barcelona.
They beat Barca in the semifinal in 2008 and played them twice in the group stages in 1999, before a certain Solskjaer sealed the treble with a lastgasp goal in the Camp Nou.
Twenty years on he returns as manager to face a side that has made the most chances in the Champions League this season led by joint topscorer Lionel Messi, looking for his fourth Champions League crown.
This balance of history and the future is finely poised in each and every tie and we can expect no quarter given in one of the finest last-eight lineups in years.