FOOTBALL DAILY: CHAMPIONS LEAGUE IN A SCOPE

Champions League is back again this week, with a lot of fixtures to anticipate. Even though this is going to be the last round of the group stages, some ten(10) teams have already qualified for the Round-of-16. The remaining six(6) would be known at the end of this round. The teams that have qualified are;

• Manchester City
• Paris Saint Germain
• Liverpool
• Ajax
• Real Madrid
• Inter Milan
• Bayern Munich
• Manchester United
• Chelsea
• Juventus

Currently, Robert Lewandowski(Bayern Munich) and Sebastian Haller (Ajax) are currently the joint top Goalscorers of the tournament and Bruno Fernandes (Manchester United) is the top assister.
So far, Bayern Munich has been the most productive in attack, having scored 19 goals while conceding 3 in 5 games. On the defence wing, Chelsea has been almost impenetrable conceding only one (1) goal while scoring ten (10) goals in 5 games. These are very outstanding stats from both teams.

Moving on to the upcoming games, the most anticipated game is the one between Bayern Munich and Barcelona. The game is most anticipated because if Barcelona loses this match and Benfica win their match against Dynamo Kyiv, Barcelona would be forced to play in the Europa League for the first time in Nineteen (19) years since 1992. To make things worse, Bayern Munich midfielder, Thomas Muller, made a statement after the Ballon d’Or was awarded to Lionel Messi when everyone thought Robert Lewandowski deserved to win it, that would mean Bayern Munich would pour out their anger and grief on Barcelona. He said,

"This is also a huge motivation for me to put everything into the balance in order to bring the Champions League back to Munich and to show the football world what is going on and above all, what German football has to offer. We have our next opportunity to do so next Wednesday in the Champions League against Barcelona. Let’s tackle it." -Thomas Muller

This is a match to really look out for because even though the game is tomorrow, things are getting very tensiuos. In my opinion, it will be one of those matches where Bayern would win by a goal or two rather than the trashing everyone is expecting… Or Barcelona would win by a goal or draw, despite their very terrible team form.