The final round of Champions League last 16 matches were played out on Wednesday evening this week, meaning we can now see who we could face in the quarter finals of the competition.
The draw will be made on Friday morning at 11am.
So, who are the final eight teams?
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Bayern (GER)
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Benfica (POR)
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Chelsea (ENG)
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Inter (ITA)
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Man City (ENG)
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Milan (ITA)
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Napoli (ITA)
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Real Madrid (ESP)
Chelsea are one of two surviving English clubs left in the competition.
Looking at the above, this is a very tough set of teams to beat. Despite Benfica perhaps being the ‘easiest’ option on there, any one of these teams are going to be VERY hard to beat.
Part of me just has this feeling that due to the whole Enzo Fernandez transfer saga in January, that we will face Benfica in the next round. Imagine that! Or maybe due to the Romelu Lukaku thing, we get Inter Milan.
Photo by Marc Atkins via Getty Images
The bookies have Chelsea as 6th favourites to win the UCL from the remaining clubs, and quite frankly, I much prefer being the underdogs. Being against all the odds, it’s how we won it in our previous two times, and there’s no reason why we can’t do that again now this year.
There are so many parallels with the last two times we won this competition, so many things feel the same. Manager changes and toxicity at the club, it’s just setup for our third UCL win in our history, surely!?
Of course, I’m dreaming. But we have to dream big, we have to belief. The players have to do that, the coaches have to do that, they have to truly believe we can win this and fight for every single ball.
I’m in two minds as to who I want to face in the next round. Part of me wants one of the ‘easier’ teams, thinking about extra prize money for getting into the semi-finals, and also the achievement of getting there and what it can do for confidence and morale. But then, there are no easy teams now so that might be irrelevant.
The other side of me thinks that if we want to win the whole thing, then we have to beat the best at some point, and we can absolutely beat any team on our day. We can, we truly can, but we have to be ‘on our day’ to do so.
Looking at it I’d rather avoid one of the ‘big guns’ like Manchester City, Bayern, or Real Madrid. But equally, as we know, we can knock any of them out on our day. Napoli wont be considered a ‘big gun’ really, but truly, they scare me, they are on fire and have goals written all over them.
European and knockout football is so different to Premier League matches, and even in all the turmoil this season, we have been shining in the UCL. Chelsea must not fear anyone and must believe they can beat any of these teams.
