Bodø/Grimm Secures 20th Champions League Quarterfinal Win!
English teams are playing this week to avoid a wipeout in the Champions League round of 16, with the reputation of the Premier League at stake. All six English clubs — a record entry for any country in the competition — failed to win a first-leg game last week and only Premier League leader Arsenal is now clearly favored to advance. Arsenal hosts Bayer Leverkusen on Tuesday with the teams tied 1-1 and shapes as the most likely to represent Europe’s richest league in the quarterfinals.
A hat trick of three-goal losses — albeit all on the road against high-class opponents — had many commentators using a famous saying credited to Michel Platini about the tiring English season. English soccer is “lions in the winter, lambs by the spring,” Platini said while UEFA president from 2007-15, quoting a phrase that seems to have come from the former Yugoslavia decades ago. On Tuesday, Manchester City will start 3-0 down at home to Real Madrid and Chelsea faces a 5-2 deficit against defending champion Paris Saint-Germain .
Tottenham trails 5-2 at home to Atletico Madrid on Wednesday, when Liverpool will hope the aura of its Anfield home can help overcome a 1-0 loss in the first leg at Galatasaray. Newcastle goes to Barcelona tied at 1-1. In the two games without an English team, the remarkable Norwegian underdog Bodø/Glimt takes a 3-0 lead to Sporting Lisbon on Tuesday and Bayern Munich is up 6-1 hosting Atalanta on Wednesday.
Here’s a look at the round of 16 picture: Zidane-like Arbeloa Ten years ago, Real Madrid promoted a former player from within the club in January as a largely untested first-team coach after giving his storied predecessor just a few months until firing him. It worked out well for Zinedine Zidane. He won that season’s Champions League title — and the next two after that — on replacing Rafa Benitez, who had himself once lifted the trophy with Liverpool.
A decade on, Álvaro Arbeloa is Madrid coach in the same circumstances as Zidane, who he played for just rarely in that 2015-16 season. Arbeloa passed his biggest coaching test last week against Man City, two months since being the surprise internal choice to replace Xabi Alonso. The latter, another former Madrid star, had been lured last year from a hugely successful job at Leverkusen.
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