Tomorrow some of the elite teams in the EUFA Champions League, in the form of Real Madrid who are the most successful team in Europe’s best competition with 15 UCL trophies to their name, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, gear up to take on the not so great teams in terms of European clubs trophy cabinet.
As we all know, there is no shortage of drama, surprises, and late twists where the EUFA Champion League is concerned. We’ve seen Liverpool overturn a 3-0 deficit to Barca at Noah Camp when they played the return leg at Anfield, Deportivo la coruna did the impossible by beating a well established AC Milan side 4-0 to progress to the last 8 of the competition in 2004 after losing 4-1 away at the San Siro.
In the UCL it is almost impossible to predict who wins the trophy based on current form in domestic leagues, teams have performed poorly in their domestic league and went on to upset the most in-form teams to lift the trophy, though some have attributed such victories to be ‘the hand of God,’ but we all know that God doesn’t play a games, talk more of one invented by mortal men, so if anyone wins the competition it is simply their time.
One of such examples is Chelsea’s against the odds triumph in the 2012 edition of the UCL, where they were outside the UCL qualification spot in their domestic league, with an inexperienced coach in the person of Rberto Di Mateo, they beat a Napoli side who had some of the most sort after players of that decade, Edinson Cavani, Marek Hamsik and Lorenzo Insigne and Goran Pandev to mention a few, 5-4 on aggregate after losing the first leg 3-1 away in Italy, in round 16.
They went ahead to eliminate defending champion Barcelona with a star studded team in the semi-finals with Pep Guardiola as their manager, making light work of Benfica in round 8 and in the final at Alianz Arena in Germany they pulled a huge upset by equalizing late in the last ten minutes of the game to take the game to extra time and subsequently coming out victorious after winning 4-3 on penalties. A Bayern team that had Frank Ribery and Arjen Roben were arguably the best wingers in world football as of then.
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Take nothing away from Chelsea’s victory that night in Germany because they went through the best of the best to be crowned European Champions for the first time.
This week’s UEFA Champions League round 8 matchups are set for 8 PM tomorrow, April 8th. London’s title pretenders will face UCL serial winners Real Madrid at the Emirates Stadium, while Bayern Munich will go up against Italian champions Inter Milan at the Allianz Arena.
On Wednesday, April 9th, Barcelona will host the German underdogs Borussia Dortmund at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, while French champions PSG will take on Aston Villa at the Parc des Princes in Paris.
Fans of other teams will be hoping that things do not go as it usually does for Real Madrid this time around as they are up against an Arsenal team whom the odds favour to progress because they have never lost to the Spanish giants home or away in the history of the UCL competition, but if the truth must be told, Domestic form, history and home turf usually are not enough to help any team proceed to subsequent rounds of the competition.
We wait to see if the elders will move to the next round and go on to lift the trophy for a record 16th time or if the London team will do enough to stop them, only for another team to then go ahead to knock them out and win the competition, seeing that inconsistency is their middle name since the last time they won a major trophy in the 2003-2024 English Premier League season.
As things stand, Barcelona are the favorite to win the competition because on papers they are the most in-form team, though they have been below standards in few games this season, especially their recent performance on Saturday which saw them drop 2 points when a much lesser team Real Betis held them to a 1-1 draw at the Estadi olímpic lluís companyys, after Real Madrid had lost to Valencia, with head coach Hansi Flick saying they should forget the disappointing game and move on but football Is not played on papers so anyone can emerge victorious amongst the eight remaining teams with Real Madrid as favorite in overall ratings based on previous records.
From the league phase the lads were separated from the boys, the boys moving to the round of 16, and the round of 16 saw the men separated from the boys, with the men set to play in the round of 8, we wait to see if the elders that are used to winning the trophy continues the streak or do the men grow into the shoes of the elders by making it into the round 4 where many teams find it difficult to reach, talk more of touching the trophy on the final day.
Tomorrow, we will be live at viewing centers to gather fans’ opinions before and after the match, as well as to capture their reactions during the game.
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