We’re up and running already in the UEFA Champions League Round of 16. After a bit of a lengthy vacation from Europe’s top flight, sixteen teams from all walks of the world’s equatorial continent privileged to have made it through the preliminaries contested in what served as the first leg of the competition’s last 16.
You can view all second round previews here!
Where Things Stand
It was of course eventful in every way. RB Leipzig held Manchester City to a 1-1 draw at home ground in Germany, Inter Milan secured a 1-0 home victory over Portuguese FC Porto, Bayern Munich came out on top against Paris Saint German in arguably the ‘biggest, colossal tie of the season’, Chelsea fell to a 1-0 loss at the hands of Borussia Dortmund.
Is Erling Haaland the best player in the world?
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Club Brugge conceded a 2-0 loss to Benfica, Milan were victorious over Tottenham Hotspur, their Italian counterparts and Serie A leaders, Napoli posted a 2-0 away win over Eintracht Frankfurt. And last but not the least, in fact the greatest, Real Madrid pulled big rabbits out of their hats to defeat Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool 5-2 at the Anfield Stadium.
All sixteen teams have a short break to take. Some have to get their backs into grinding hard for a spectacular result if progression into the quarter-finals of the competition is anything to go by. Some, speaking of clubs like Madrid, simply have to defend a stellar first-leg result, play out a decent game. But phase-two would be upon us in less than a week’s time. Liverpool make the return trip to the magical, spell binding Santiago Bernabeu. Messi, Mbappe and the rest of the PSG pack touch down in Munich as they look to write their home errors wrong and keep their Champions League hopes alive.
We’re trusting this to be more scintillating, intriguing and exhilarating than it was in the first. And so, we delve into, half hastily, half detailedly, the match-ups slated for the next two weeks and how exactly we see them pan out.
BIG DISCLAIMER!: The predictions are not to be taken score for score, verbatim. They’re just meant to give a picture of the final outcome we expect in the match-ups.
Napoli vs Eintracht Frankfurt
We’re expecting this tie to be as direct as direct itself can be. No mincing words, no beating about the bush, no long talk, Napoli should go through in this one. The results should typically be a semblance of the 2-0 win which played out in the first leg.
The defending Europa League Champions are definitely not going to give up without a fight, are they? They’re not going to throw in the towel just like that, but Oliver Glasner’s men are way in over their head here. They’re facing a team that’s on red, hot fire.
To start with, Luciano Spalleti’s men have lost just two games(Inter and Liverpool) across all competitions this season, they’ve got a win percentage of 84.3%, which is more than just good. They’ve got a 100% home record, are on a seven-game winning streak, haven’t conceded a single goal in the past five games(infact they’ve conceded just one in the past seven fixtures) and importantly, they’ve got a beast of a striker in Victor Osimhen, a player who won’t stop at nothing, who can’t just stop scoring goals. It definitely is Napoli’s for the taking.
Prediction: Napoli 3-0 Frankfurt
Players to watch:
Napoli: Victor Osimhen
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