The confrontation between Manchester City and Bayern Munich on Tuesday catches the eye in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals in football, which witnesses an exam for Real Madrid, the defending champions, with the injured English Chelsea, and a fiery Italian duel between Napoli and Milan, and Benfica’s match against Inter.
The confrontation between City and Bayern will be the first between them in the knockout stages in a competition whose Bavarian title has been won six times, the last of which was in 2020, while City aspires to achieve its first title.
This confrontation will pit the Spanish coach of City, Pep Guardiola, against the team he supervised from 2013 to 2016, with whom he won the German League title three times and the Club World Cup.
Also, Guardiola, who was crowned coach with Barcelona in 2009 and 2011, will stand up to the new coach of Bayern, Thomas Tuchel, who was deprived of continental glory in the 2021 final when he was at the head of the technical management of Chelsea (1-0) in front of empty stands in Porto at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. 19.
Tuchel, who admires Guardiola’s style and was suddenly appointed instead of Julian Nagelsmann due to the decline in the level according to his management, hopes to repeat what he did with Chelsea, where he arrived four months ago after his dismissal from Saint-Germain training.
Guardiola is counting on the lethal Norwegian scorer Erling Haaland, who has scored 44 goals in various competitions this season, including a wonderful scissor at the weekend against Southampton.
Inter, who qualified for the quarter-finals for the first time since 2012 and the last of the Italian teams to win the title in 2010, led by Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho, will be facing Benfica, in a repeat of the 1965 final when “Nerazzurri” won its second consecutive title by winning 1-0.
For his part, Benfica has not succeeded in going beyond the quarter-finals since reaching the 1990 final.
