The defending champions Real Madrid will play Bayern
Munich in the quarterfinals of this season’s Champions League, as Friday’s draw
pitted two of the competition’s favorites against each other.
The two teams have
won three of the previous four Champions League titles, and the latest
installment will see the Bayern coach, Carlo Ancelotti, return to face his
former club.It was Ancelotti who led Real Madrid to a
memorable semifinal victory over Bayern in 2014, when Madrid won the second
leg in Munich, 4-0 (and the tie 5-0 on aggregate), the German team’s record
home defeat in Europe.Madrid, which has lifted the Champions League trophy a
record 11 times, has won its last three games against Bayern, while, in 10
two-legged knockout ties, both teams have won five apiece.In the buildup to
Friday’s draw in Nyon, Switzerland, however, it was not the heavyweights of
European soccer, like Bayern, that Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane was
hoping to avoid. Zidane — a two-time Champions League winner himself, once as a
player and once as a coach — said this week that he was looking to steer clear
of Leicester City, which is playing in its maiden Champions League campaign.They
keep achieving what they are told they can’t achieve,” Zidane said. “Whatever
club Leicester face, they won’t be favorites. And with that pressure off them
and on the other team, anything can happen.”Gianluigi Buffon, the captain of
Juventus and Italy’s national team, offered similar sentiments. He, like
Zidane, got his wish.Juventus will face Barcelona in a repeat of the 2015
final, which the Spanish champions won, 3-1, on their way to collecting the Treble
— league, domestic cup and Champions League — that season. That tie will also
mean a return to the Camp Nou for the Brazilian defender Dani Alves, who spent
eight years at Barcelona and made 247 appearances for the club. Ahead of the
draw, Alves said he would like to face “anyone but Barcelona”; he, unlike his
teammate Buffon, was not so lucky.Leicester drew Atlético Madrid, a defeated
finalist in 2014 and 2016. Leicester, the English champion, has been fighting
relegation for large parts of its title-defending season, but it secured a
surprise place in the quarterfinals by rallying to eliminate Sevilla this week.In
the final matchup of the last eight, A.S. Monaco — the highest-scoring team in
Europe’s top five leagues — will face the 2013 finalist Borussia Dortmund. Like
Leicester, Monaco, which plays in France’s Ligue 1, overturned an unlikely
situation to reach this stage of the competition, coming back from a 5-3 defeat
in its first leg against Manchester City to win its second leg, 3-1, and advance
on away goals.The first legs of the quarterfinals will be played on April 11
and 12, with the returns on April 18 and 19.this year’s Champions League final
will be played on June 3 at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales.
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