Barcelona Futbol Club will be facing English side Chelsea in this season's Round of 16 Knockout round. The first leg will he held at Stamford Bridge on the 21st of February 2018 and the return leg will be on March 3rd 2018 at the Camp Nou. For some reason Barca keep on getting tough opponents in this stage - last year it was PSG, before that Arsenal, before that twice Manchester City, before that AC Milan and so on. One have to seriously ponder whether it's just Bad Luck or whether it's something UEFA do! Especially considering that some big teams keep on getrting smaller oppositions till they reach at least semi-finals. Regardless of all that we need to get ready for two nights of very challenging football. Funny enough in my preview to UEFA Champions League Draw, I mentioned two teams in the best to avoid category; we got one from that only.
For a change this time somehow UEFA managed to mess things around for Real Madrid. The defending Champions were handed over an interesting challenge from the high flying Paris Saint-Germain. That will be another mouth-watering tie especially with Real Madrid having to face PSG away from home in second leg. In the previous seasons they had Napoli, Roma, twice Shalke, Manchester United, CSKA at the same stage; now you should understand why i said UEFA really screwed things up! There are some more interesting ties with Totenham facing Juventus, Sevilla facing Manchester United. The rest of ties are easy one for the big team like Manchester City facing FC Basel (only need to see the extent of destruction), Bayern facing Besiktas, Roma facing Shaktar, Liverpool facing Porto.
Chelsea versus Barca had more or less was a regular fixture in the Champions League draw sometime back. The last encounter was in the season when Chelsea won the Champions League. After that we never faced them, due to they struggling to maintain the standards they set earlier. So this time it will have a fresh feel to this encounter. Chelsea currently lies at third position in the League trailing the leaders Manchester City by a whooping 14 points. Conte has more or less conceded the title, which means they will be focusing full on Champions League. That's not a great news for FC Barcelona who will be fighting on three fronts when this tie arrive.
The book makers favourite at the moment for the Champions League is Manchester City. That's understandable after been handed out a very one-sided tie. Bayern Munich who got the second next available option is second favourite, even though they may not be anywhere near the great standards they set some seasons ago. The high scoring PSG is the third favourite and both Spanish sides Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are joint fourth favourite. These all are due to the ties we handed out and the end of the tie, if we emerge victorious we will be moving in as the firm favourite.
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AllAboutFCBarcelona.com is a Blog dedicated to the Most prestigous Club in the world, FC Barcelona by an ardent fan. Here I discuss about the Latest happening surrounding our Club and present my Views about the same.