How did the draw for the quarter-final stage of the Champions League go?

The draw for the 1/4 finals of the current Champions League turned out to be, in fact, ideal, forming four equal pairs. And one of them is simply a “dream couple”, pitting the winners of the two previous tournaments – Manchester City and Real – against each other.

Those fans who commented on the results of yesterday’s draw for the second round of the Champions League in online broadcasts of various major media resources like the BBC, of ​​course, were not original in highlighting the main, in their opinion, quarter-final pair. Well, of course, this is a pair made from Manchester City and Real Madrid, the current owner of the number one club trophy and the team that took it in the year before last.

By the way, it looks a lot like some kind of witchcraft. It is clear that the likelihood of two football giants intersecting in the Champions League play-offs is high. But this will happen in April for the third season in a row. A rare coincidence.

True, before this, Manchester City and Real Madrid fought in the semi-finals, which now none of them will reach. The confrontation of 2022 is, naturally, more firmly etched in the memory. In the end, it was, in principle, included in the list of the most dramatic in the history of the tournament. In the first match, Manchester City prevailed – 4:3. In the return, Real was losing until the 90th minute, but pulled out thanks to two consecutive goals from Rodrigue. And then in overtime, Karim Benzema scored the decisive penalty. In 2023, everything was much bland. A draw in the first meeting, a major one, 4:0, a victory in the second by Manchester City, which was rated an order of magnitude higher than last year’s lost Real Madrid. Today’s scenario does not promise such an outcome. Both football giants are in good shape. In general, on paper the pair are approximately equal, as are – in a rare situation – all three others.

For example, “adjacent” – its winner will go to either Manchester City or Real Madrid in the semi-finals. In it, Arsenal will fight with Bayern.

Fans of Arsenal, which has recently been literally invulnerable in the English championship and is tearing everyone apart, will probably warm their souls by the fact that Bayern recently experienced something like a crisis, which resulted in a change of coach. Although the Munich team seems to be getting out of this unpleasant state: in the return match of the opening round of the Champions League they defeated Lazio, in the German championship they just effortlessly, 8:1, dealt with Mainz. Bayern fans are probably inspired by two things. Its current leader, Harry Kane, who played for Tottenham for many years before moving to Germany in the summer of 2023, is very familiar with the Arsenal defense structure and seems to be terribly comfortable: in 19 meetings held against this team, he scored as many as 14 goals. The second circumstance is the example of Porto. The Portuguese club almost knocked out the English club in the 1/8 finals thanks to a simple and accurate game, losing only in a penalty shootout and conceding a single goal in two matches. In the games against Porto, Arsenal did not at all resemble the unstoppable attacking machine that they often appear in the domestic championship.

In the other half of the key part of the playoffs, formed by the draw, there is also a clash between two football giants – PSG and Barcelona, ​​in which the Catalan club should most likely still be considered the favorite. The radically restructured Parisian team does not shine with stability, and in the three rounds of the French championship that preceded the draw, they parted ways with their rivals Rennes, Monaco and Reims. Here, however, there is, let’s say, additional intrigue. The unimpressive results of PSG can be considered partly a consequence of the fact that PSG coach Luis Enrique, at the beginning of spring, suddenly acquired the habit of leaving the club’s brightest star Kylian Mbappe on the bench, outside the starting lineup, about whom it became known in the winter that he connects his future not with him, but with “Real”. If Enrique does this in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, then Barcelona’s chances will skyrocket.

In the penultimate round, the winner of this pair will face the most unprepossessing semi-finalist in terms of brilliance of the lineup and fresh background in this chic company. It will be either Atlético, which kicked out last year’s finalist Inter from the Champions League, or Borussia Dortmund, which was lucky to meet PSV, which did not dream of much, in the opening round of the play-offs.

Alexey Dospehov