The draw for the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals took place early Friday morning, and we’ve got some doozies headed our way. The headline matchup will be Bayern Munich taking on Real Madrid, but the balls rolled in such a way that we got 3 other fascinating match-ups.
Barcelona will match up against Juventus in a rematch of 2015’s Champions League final, with the Italians looking for revenge after the Catalans took that one 3-1. Borussia Dortmund vs. Monaco should be the most entertaining tie for a neutral observer; both teams score a lot of goals and play defense only so that they can get the ball back and score faster. And Leicester City got what must be their dream matchup in Atletico Madrid, as the Spanish club’s strength is decidedly not in attack, which plays into the English champions (that never gets old to say) and their counterattacking style.
An interesting subplot of the quarterfinals round is how many Latino players are not just participating, but starring, and with that come storylines galore: Lionel Messi vs. his possible successor in Argentinian lore, Juventus’s Paulo Dybala, not to mention serial bottler Gonzalo Higuaín; Monaco’s Brazilians-plus-Falcao contingent against Dortmund’s no-Latino side; Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid’s diverse squadron of Latinos going up against the sparser Leicester and Bayern ranks.
With stars like Messi, Neymar, Higuaín, and James Rodríguez, along with up-and-coming vital cogs like Real Madrid’s Casemiro, Atletico Madrid’s José Giménez and Ángel Correa, and Dybala, the quarterfinals should prove a great stage for the Latino flair to shine through.