This week, the Champions League quarter-finals begin! Pep Guardiola and Thomas Tuchel have a long history of facing each other as they have played against each other in Bayern Munich vs. Mainz, Bayern Munchen vs. Borussia Dortmund, Manchester City vs. Chelsea and now they are playing against eachother in Manchester City vs. Bayern Munchen! Will there be a surprise winner this year? Also, how will the Premier League’s last two teams (Chelsea and Manchester City) do? Let’s see!
Sport News Center is thinking about some of the important things.
Can you name all the teams competing in the Champions League quarter-finals?
The Fascinating History between Guardiola and Tuchel
Man City and Chelsea had a match, which resulted in Chelsea’s win with an 0-1 score. Tuchel commented on it being either the best or worst first meeting.
Guardiola, who ended up coaching Man City after leaving Bayern Munich in 2016, was expecting to play against Julian Nagelsmann’s team again (he had won twice against his Hoffenheim team back in 2018-19). However, Nagelsmann got recently fired and replaced by Thomas Tuchel – someone Guardiola is even more familiar with.
Managers Guardiola and Tuchel have faced each other 10 times in the last decade. Out of those 10 matchups, Guardiola has won six and Tuchel has won three. These victories all happened within a period of 6 weeks stretching from April 17th to May 29th 2021. Chelsea’s win over City in both the FA Cup semi-final and Champions League final led people to think that Tuchel was better than Guardiola. In the Champions League final, Guardiola made a risky decision by not including a defensive midfielder which didn’t end well.
Manchester City has done much better against Chelsea in recent years than when they faced each other while Guardiola was with Bayern Munich. In fact, they have won 4 times and drawn once in their past encounters with the blues.
On the other hand, things aren’t looking so good for Guardiola when it comes to facing his former club Barcelona – they have defeated him twice by big margins of 3-0 and 4-0.
Trying to Forge an Unusual Chelsea Tradition
Frank Lampard is the fourth coach to take over Chelsea Football Club this year. Last season, he began his time at the club and was ultimately replaced by Thomas Tuchel. Together they worked hard to win the champions league trophy!
This season began with Tuchel in charge but now it’s Lampard’s turn to try and help the team achieve even greater success. He hopes he can make them champions again!
He is trying to continue an unusual Chelsea team tradition: winning a European trophy in their first year with him as coach. Although, this is not his first time coaching the team.
The last five times they won a European trophy it was all with managers who has been hired that same season. Four of those five were even hired during the season and three after Christmas!
Potter had wished to become the coach of a team, but he was fired last week. Bruno would have been given the chance to do it until the end of this season.
In 2022, something exciting happened that was led by Potter’s predecessor Tuchel – they won the Champions League Championship! The German took over in January.
Also, Italian Maurizio Sarri coached Chelsea for one year and during his time there they won the 2019 Europa League trophy.
Rafael Benitez was the manager of the Liverpool team and in the year 2013, he took Chelsea to win Europa League. Before this, Roberto di Matteo became head coach for just three months and then steered Chelsea to clinch Champions League title in 2012. Lastly, Gianluca Vialli served as player-coach for Chelsea football club and guided them to lift European Cup Winners’ Cup that same year.
Dave Sexton is the only Chelsea manager who won a European trophy more than a year into his reign. Can Lampard, who was a Chelsea player when he won the Champions League in 2011-12, join him? Real Madrid (European royalty) will be their obstacle in the quarter-finals, but Chelsea has a good record against them, having lost once in seven encounters.
No team has ever lost fewer than 14% of their matches against Real Madrid after playing at least five games against them in Europe.
Phenomenal 18-Year-Old Georgian Winger Taking Europe by Storm!
This season in Serie A, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Napoli have beaten AC Milan twice but have also lost to them once.
Kvaratskhelia is quite a special player – he had hardly been known before 9 months ago, only playing football in Georgia and Russia with the occasional inclusion in the Europa Conference League match too.
18-year-old Georgian winger Giorgi Kvaratskhelia is a major star and one of the hottest players in the outstanding team of the Serie A, Napoli. He has achieved 12 goals – ranking only second to four other players – and 10 assists, more than any other player across Europe’s top 5 leagues. In addition to himself, Lionel Messi, Neymar from PSG, Randal Kolo Muani from Frankfurt and Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka are the only ones that have achieved figures of double digits for both goals and assists in those mentioned leagues.
Kvaratskhelia from Napoli is the best in providing assists for his team in the Champions League. Both him and his team will be happy with a favorable quarter-final draw (i.e. one that’s not too tough) against AC Milan, whom are 22 points lower than them in the league standings even though Milan beat them 4-0 recently.
Benfica
This season, two players from Benfica have been the best goal scorers in the Portugal league – Joao Mario and Goncalo Ramos. This is even though Benfica had to sell over £200 million worth of their talented players! These included the star striker, Darwin Nunez to Liverpool for between £64 million and £85 million, plus midfielder Enzo Fernandez to Chelsea for £107 million. Plus, more than thirty other players left the club! Despite all this, under their manager Roger Schmidt, it seems like Benfica, nearly invincible.
Since their new coach was hired in the summer, they’ve played 46 games and amazingly only lost twice. One of those losses though happened recently when they were playing at home against Porto. They were so good in the Champions League group stage that they beat even big teams like PSG and Juventus; with 13 more points than Juventus! After that success, Club Bruges had to say goodbye to their boss Scott Parker. Now, they have a comfortable 7-point lead over Porto at the top of the Portuguese league as they make their way to winning a trophy for the first time since 2019.
If Barcelona wins their soccer match against Inter Milan, they will play either AC Milan or Napoli in the semi-finals of the European Cup. This would be their first final since 1990. Vote here if you are using SportNewsCenter’s news app!
