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UEFA Champions League: Your Running Commentary

UEFAChampionsLeagueLogo (Getty)

By DAN KARELL

Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Paris Saint-Germain host Lionel Messi and FC Barcelona (2:45pm, Fox Soccer Channel) in one of Tuesday’s first-leg matches of the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League.

Ibrahimovic was recently cleared of a red-card ban that would have ruled him out for the matches against Barcelona, but the French club’s leading scorer is now set to run at the heart of his former team. Barcelona’s last Champions League match was one for the ages, with Messi scoring two first-half goals, and the Spanish side coming back from a two goal deficit to win 4-2 on aggregate.

Bayern Munich are coming off their best win of the season, a 9-2 clobbering of Hamburg SV, and welcome in Juventus (2:45pm, Fox Soccer Plus/MSG Plus) to the Allianz Arena. Like Barcelona and PSG, both Bayern and Juventus are at the top of their domestic standings, and are far enough ahead to have rested players this past weekend, all for the purpose of facing each other mid-week.

Juventus showed their class last round with a 5-0 aggregate victory over Celtic. Bayern needed away goals to move on to the quarter-finals round, losing to Arsenal 2-0 at home, evening the tie on aggregate.

If you will be watching today’s action, please feel free to share your thoughts, opinions and some play-by-play in the comments section below.

Enjoy the action.

Comments

  1. Memo to Platini – seems like those extra officials on baseline whose entire job is to catch offside and goal line calls are doing a bang up job.

    Reply
    • Offsides is absolutely not the responsibility of the official on the goal line. They are there for goal line calls and to get a better angle on plays in the are when the other officials’ vision may be blocked. The guys on the goal line are literally never in proper position to call offsides

      Reply
  2. How low Beckham has fallen, after playing on one of the prestige Cup in the Concacaf region which is the CONCACAF CHAMPION now he is playing a miserable Cup call the Champion League. How dare him. LMAO isn’t that funny. On a serious note Wow Beckham did good on a champion game and that show that playing in the MLS wont take away anything from your game and still can play in a elite level. MESSI like always come thru but I hope he does rest some game he needs it.

    Reply
  3. Clattenburg is letting most anything go. The yellow on Mandzukic was a foul but hardly deserved a yellow. He made contact quite slowly.

    I feel that Vidal should have that yellow for generally hacking people the whole game.

    Reply
  4. Anyone watching Bayern v Juve?
    I may switch over. PSG doing better than I expected, but that’s still not good enough so far.

    Reply
    • Bayern totally dominated the first half, could easily be up 3-0 or even 4-0, with Juventus all shook up and hanging on for life by a thread. Ref Mark Clattenburg letting them play hard, very physical game. Will be interesting to see whether Juventus can get it together and do anything in the second half.

      Reply
  5. Pretty clear that PSG’s coaches studied Real Madrid’s victories over Barca and developed their strategy accordingly. They have played some effective long diagonals and looked good on the break, but they are just a step slower than Real. No one can break like Los Merengues. Ibra is playing the Ronaldo role, but he just doesn’t have the same skill set.

    Interested to see if Real PSG will work. If Lavezzi would stay on sides and Ibra would keep his shots on target, this game would be one or two to nil.

    Reply

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