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.
Despite the immediate and justified outrage over the European Super League, fans still want to see historical big teams play each other. There are often similar comments around the Champions League when clubs with less history in the competition progress. It is the strange paradox of football. We want a meritocracy but often games are better when teams have a shared history that prompts rivalry.
It is funny that the Champions League quarter-finals are taking place after a weekend where both Arsenal and Wolfsburg lost. Neither team made it out of the qualifiers after they both lost to Paris FC, who then did not make it out of their group. Yet despite being semi-finalists last year, on recent form, it is hard to argue from a footballing perspective that either team in the quarter-finals would make particularly compelling watching.
Perhaps the combination of Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Roma and Ajax in one group was more unfortunate in this regard. But it also led to the most exciting group stage climax the Champions League has ever had.
That was partly a result of Ajax’s incredible success, a reminder that the big clubs within the women’s game are far less entrenched than they are wtihin men’s football. Names that have not contributed or even existed in the past may well go on to be perennial achieves in the next five to ten years.
Benfica’s appearance in the quarter-final stage is testament to that progression. Having participated in three previous Champions League editions, and two previous group stages, their arrival at the knock-outs is a result of year on year improvement.
They also might fancy themselves to spring an upset. Lyon have blown hot and cold this year. Recent results saw them exit the Coupe de France at the semi-final stage on penalties against Fleury as well as just about scraping a draw with Paris Saint- Germain. Their group stage fizzled out too as they drew against Brann and Slavia Praha.
Even if the outcome from last year is the same and all of the first placed group stage teams reach the semi-final, it is reasonable to expect that the games might not be quite as close. Last season, only Roma vs Barcelona was won by a greater than one goal margin, and all four ties were in the balance after the first leg.
At the same time, all of the second placed teams are going to gain valuable experience from these ties. Ajax and Benfica, in particular, look like clubs who will continue to feature in and around the latter stages of the Champions League in the future. Meanwhile BK Häcken and Brann have provided an intriguing rebuttal to the suggestion that Scandinavia’s influence on women’s football in Europe is waning.
There is only one more season of this specific format before the Champions League moves to the Swiss model. Perhaps that will lead to ties more reflective of what the perception of the upper echelons of women’s European football is. But at the same time, all eight of the teams in the quarter-finals competed to get there. The enthusiasm among them is clear - you only need to look at the ticket sales.