FAMILIAR RIVALS
City draw Liverpool, Real test for Juve
>> NYON: Manchester City will face Liverpool in a mouthwatering all-English Champions League quarter-final while Juventus have a chance to gain revenge on holders Real Madrid in a repeat of last year’s final.
Surprise qualifiers Sevilla take on five-time European champions Bayern Munich while Lionel Messi’s Barcelona were paired with AS Roma in the draw made in Nyon yesterday.
Juergen Klopp’s Liverpool side will host Pep Guardiola’s City at Anfield for the first leg, either on April 3 or April 4, as the sides play each other for the first time in Europe.
It will also be the first meeting of two English clubs in the last eight of the Champions League since Manchester United overcame Chelsea at that stage in the 2010-2011 season on their way to the final.
City’s director of football Txiki Begiristain said: “We know each other very well, they are a very offensive team, the truth is it is going to be a great couple of games.”
Cristiano Ronaldo and his Real teammates will be happy to be playing the second leg of their tie at their Santiago Bernabeu stadium against Juventus, whose experience proved lethal to English club Tottenham in the last 16.
Real Madrid director Emilio Butragueno said it would be a “very special match”
“Juventus played against Tottenham, which had extraordinary results and was superior, and yet, despite the difficulties, came through. They have a competitor’s mentality.”
Real thrashed Juventus 4-1 in last year’s final in Cardiff.
Former Roma captain Francesco Totti meanwhile said his club were excited about the prospect of taking on Barcelona and Messi, who scored his 100th Champions League goal in the comfortable 3-0 defeat of Chelsea on Wednesday.
“Meeting Barcelona in the quarterfinals of the Champions League — that’s a match that will be hard to forget,” Totti told BeIN Sport.
Roma’s sporting director Monchi joked: “You can’t say we were very lucky with this draw.”
German giants Bayern face Sevilla, the surprise slayers of Manchester United in the last round, but goalkeeper Sven Ulreich said they were relieved to avoid one of their major rivals.
“There are harder draws. It’s doable, but Sevilla have shone in Europe and they have won three Europa Leagues,” Ulreich said.
“So we’ll be very focused when we go over there [for the first leg] and then we’ll do the business at home.”
Sevilla’s sporting director Oscar Arias said: “This is very difficult. We are facing one of the historic clubs of European football, a great club in this competition. But we are up for it.”
The second-leg ties will be played on April 10-11 while the semi-finals will take place on April 24-25 and May 1-2.
Kiev hosts this year’s final on May 26.
Meanwhile, sponsors, officials and corporate hospitality programmes have been allocated more than one third of the 63,000 tickets for this year’s Champions League final in Kiev.
European football governing body Uefa said in a statement yesterday that 40,700 tickets would be available for “fans and the general public”.
“The remaining [22,300] tickets are allocated to the local organising committee, Uefa and national associations, commercial partners and broadcasters, and to serve the corporate hospitality programme,” it said.
The two finalists will receive 17,000 tickets each while 6,700 tickets will be put on sale to fans worldwide on Uefa’s website.
Prices will range from €70 (approximately 2,700 baht) for the cheapest to €450 (17,000 baht) for most expensive.
Uefa said that prices had remained stable across all categories compared to last year’s final in Cardiff.