Will the UWCL quarter-finals be exciting?
The names of the clubs feel like a mismatch but there is still value in the ties
The Champions League quarter-finals begin tonight with four seemingly uneven ties set to take place. Of all the second placed teams who made it to the quarter finals, only BK Häcken have ever got this far in the competition before. Even if it was more than a decade ago and they had a completely different name.
Looking at the ties it is understandable to feel like perhaps this round of fixtures is set to be a bit of a walkover for the four teams who finished top of their group. Yet given that last year all four teams who topped their group reached the semi-finals, that is not exactly a new concept at this stage of the Champions League.
The four fixtures taking place are: Ajax vs Chelsea, Benfica vs Lyon, BK Häcken vs Paris Saint-Germain, and Brann vs Barcelona.
The names that reached the last eight in 2022/23 were much bigger. Regardless of where the teams had finished in their groups, there was a sense that all of them could give each other a game.
And so it mostly proved. Lyon ended up playing out that extraordinary penalty shoot-out against Chelsea after being surprised by Arsenal to finish second in their group. Arsenal themselves lost their first leg to Bayern Munich before coming back to win 2-1 on aggregate.
With four undeniably smaller teams taking on the mantle this year, it is understandable that most people will look at the ties and think these games will not even be close.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Flying Geese to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.