The finalists were appointed a new meeting – Newspaper Kommersant No. 206 (7407) dated 11/08/2022

The most interesting pair of the starting round of the Champions League according to the results of its draw was the one that brought together, already at such an early stage of the hunt for the main club trophy, the two finalists of the previous draw – Real Madrid and Liverpool. At the same time, unlike the May match in Paris, before the current confrontation between the Spanish and English giants, the balance has changed quite radically. If in the spring the Spanish club beat the English in spite of him, now the favorites of the pair should be considered to be playing this season much more evenly Madrid.

Monday’s Champions League round of 16 draw has formed a pair that looks like the undisputed number one hit of the round. She brought together those clubs that less than six months ago, at the end of May, played with each other in the Paris final of the previous draw. The most amusing thing in this case is how radically during these months the alignment has changed in the confrontation between two teams that are approximately identical in status.

Liverpool approached the last intersection as the too obvious favorite. Throughout the season, no matter what tournaments were discussed, he exuded power and persuasiveness. Real Madrid, on the other hand, creaked, tumbled, and lasted until the last meeting in the schedule of the main European Cup, demonstrating, first of all, not class, but amazing vitality, based mainly on the insights of forward Karim Benzema. On the verge of defeat, he hung at all stages of the play-offs, but in the final he got the better of a team that was listed above, which seemed perfectly matched to win the Champions League. He won thanks to the only goal of Vinicius, but not to say that it was out of the question.

Now it’s the other way around. Real Madrid, the only Spanish club that managed to overcome the group stage barrier (the disaster happened not only to Sevilla, but also to Barcelona and Atlético), is similar to Real Madrid, an ordinary, or something, football monster in a good tone , ready to move through the corpses of enemies to the next trophy. And Liverpool is like Real Madrid of last season – uncertain, unstable. He constantly stumbles in the Premier League, losing, among other things, to such opponents as Leeds and Nottingham, and in the group he did not experience prohibitive difficulties, it seems, solely because two of the three competitors – Ajax and Glasgow Rangers — were too unsightly.

At the same time, the third – the sensation of the Napoli football autumn – Liverpool jumped, sending him to the bottom “basket” and, as it turned out, to a rendezvous with a terrible opponent.

The Italian club itself got almost a “gift” option in the face of Eintracht, which miraculously jumped out of the group.

And the English media resources, emphasizing the complexity of the task facing Liverpool, reminded, of course, that Real Madrid, in principle, has recently been a terribly uncomfortable opponent for him. In 2018, Madrid also beat Liverpool in the Champions League final, and in 2021 they smashed it in the quarter-finals.

The flagship of the championship, in which Eintracht plays, went, by the way, to another pair with a catchy “sign” that pushed the foreheads of the giants who recently played in the Champions League final.

Bayern defeated PSG in it in 2020 – in a draw crumpled by the coronavirus pandemic. Benfica provided a good chance to get such a combination. Her performance was among the group stage surprises. The Portuguese club before its start looked doomed to take a place no higher than third, but Juventus crashed, going to the Europa League, and PSG Lisbon bypassed by additional indicators, having drawn with the French team twice and distributing it into a less profitable “basket”. As for Benfica, they were lucky with the draw – they got the upstart Brugge.

Another German gift was received in the 1/8 finals of Manchester City. In terms of the volume of names, “Leipzig” probably surpasses “Eintracht” a little, but the term “grand” does not stick to it either. And in the table of the current German championship, the Leipzigers are even lower than the Frankfurt club.

The remaining three pairs of the starting round of the play-offs, which will take place in February and March, look fairly even. In any case, it is impossible to determine the obvious favorites in them, at least at the moment. In these pairs, Inter will meet with Porto, Milan with Tottenham, and Borussia Dortmund with Chelsea.

Arnold Kabanov