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!
Eintracht Frankfurt vs SSC Napoli
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.
Real Madrid vs Liverpool
And to wrap up this series, we call this rather eccentric tie. Going by the circumstances surrounding the 14-time Champions League winners, no one(or so we think) really expected Los Blancos to pull off a 5-2 win against Liverpool last week, not to talk of coming back from two goals down.
Madrid have shown exactly why they always remain big favourites to win the competition they’ve always won. In the middle of a tough, unrewarding season, they can always deliver big results when it comes to European matters, the reverse of PSG’s case and what distinguishes them as an established European side.
It’d be sweaty for The Reds to pull off a win at the Santiago Bernabeu with the loud, rapturous Spanish crowd, talkless of a comeback. Madrid have a good home record, have only conceded one defeat at the Bernabeu, a 3-1 loss to Barcelona in January. Liverpool on the other hand have a lesser-than-average away profile, having won five out of 18 away games so far this season. Logically speaking, Carlos Ancelotti’s men should make the quarter-finals.
Prediction: Real Madrid 2-1 Liverpool
Players to watch:
Madrid: Karim Benzema, Vinicius Jr.
Liverpool: Mohamed Salah, Cody Gakpo, Darwin Nunez
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