Barcelona reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League after defeating Arsenal and was now pitted against Athletic Madrid. Even though Athletic Madrid are arguably one of the best teams that is still performing in the European competition, this does not seem to concern the head coach of Barcelona, Luis Enrique as he jokingly said that the only team he did not want to face was his own.
“The only team that I don’t want to draw is Barcelona. Luckily I don’t think we’ll get them, so I’m relaxed,” he said in his post-match press conference.
The other remaining clubs that are competing in the Champions League are: Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Athletic Madrid, Wolfsburg, Paris Saint-Germain, Benfica and Manchester City.
This is the 9th consecutive time that Barcelona have managed to get into the quarter-finals of the Champions League and this is evidence of the dominance that the Spanish club has been displaying for the past few years.
It’s safe to assume that Barcelona are the favorites on winning the Champions League of this current season as Luis Enrique has at his disposal the attacking combination of Luis Suarez, Neymar and Lionel Messi, this partnership is widely considered to be the best in the world if they get too overconfident it could finish with unexpected results and it’s what happened a few years ago during the quarterfinal stages of the 2013-14 Champions League season.
As reported byJenny B Campbell, Athletic Madrid faced off with Barcelona in the quarterfinals of the 2013-14 Champions League and Athletic Madrid managed to claim a 2-1 triumph over Barcelona which was a pretty surprising victory and it might happen once again depending on what occurs in April 5th which is the date when the match is expected to take place.
The first leg of the battle between Athletic Madrid vs Barcelona will be played on April 5th in Camp Nou while the 2nd leg will be played on April 13 at the Vicente Calderon stadium.