Abraham P. Romero

Amadeu Garcia

Miguel A. Herguedas

Updated Friday, March 15, 2024-22:25

  • Champions League Quarterfinal Draw: Madrid-City, Atlético-Dortmund and PSG-Barça

We already know

the Champions League quarterfinal

playoffs .

Real Madrid - Manchester City, PSG - Barcelona, ​​Atlético - Dortmund and Arsenal - Bayern

.

Here we break down the virtues and defects of the Spanish rivals.

Madrid-City: an almost unbeatable ogre

Last summer, happy after the ecstasy of their first Champions League,

Manchester City

went on the market and spent

241 million

.

Thus, as if he needed to turn around a team in reconstruction, as if he did not already have the best, or one of the two best, squads in all of Europe.

The Croatian defender Josko Gvardiol

arrived

for 90 million, the Portuguese forward

Matheus Nunes

for 62, the Belgian midfielder

Jeremy Doku

for 60 and the Croatian midfielder

Mateo Kovacic

for 29. And now, already in March, none of them is among the ten footballers with most minutes of

Pep Guardiola

's squad

this season.

This summary of the signings, their cost and their use speaks perfectly about the few adjustments that the Santpedor coach has needed to make in recent months.

His Manchester City, the same Manchester City that scored four goals against

Real Madrid

in the second leg of last year's semi-finals, continues to be a football-playing machine with the same pieces.

There is

Erling Haaland

, with 29 goals in 33 games, in a season far from historic numbers but close to the scoring voracity that he has always shown.

There is

Kevin De Bruyne

, back from an injury that has only allowed him to play 700 minutes, but that makes him arrive fresh at the crossroads with Madrid, whom he already scored at the Bernabéu last year.

And there is

Rodri

, the axis of the champion, with more than 3,000 minutes, and 7 goals, this campaign.

Everything goes through the Spaniard's boots, perhaps more than ever, in a team that suffered a small setback in the Premier at the beginning of the season and will now play the league in the spring against Arsenal

and

Liverpool

,

from which they are only one spot.

It may be that there, in the need to continue competing in the domestic tournament, a small advantage arises for Madrid, leader of the League with seven points ahead of

Girona

.

But the reality is that this City has plenty of arguments to compete in all competitions.

Proof of this is last year's treble:

Champions, Premier and FA Cup

.

For now, and despite the difficulties, this year it is still alive in all three.

And he does so, in part, thanks to a scary wardrobe.

Goalkeeper

Ederson

was injured against Liverpool and is a doubt for the tie, being the only mole on the list against Madrid.

Meanwhile, in defense

Walker, Dias, Aké, Akanji, Gvardiol and Stones

share the three defensive positions that Guardiola is using in his lineups.

Yes, only three.

The coach is now putting Stones in as a second midfielder, next to Rodri, but his full-backs are already midfielders, not defenders.

Foden, Julián Álvarez and Doku, in addition to Grealish

, now injured, share a role on the wings, leaving two positions in the midfield that are always, barring injury or rotation, for

De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva

.

The Belgian scored in the first leg against Madrid and the Portuguese scored the first of the return, starting the rout.

They are the creators of fear: the starts and shots of

Haaland

, who has just scored 5 goals in an FA Cup match against Luton and has accumulated 7 in the last four games.

He was out for a month with a foot injury, but is now back fit.

This is the club with the highest market value in its squad: 1,270 million.

An almost unbeatable ogre that will once again measure the level of Real Madrid.

PSG-Barça: the young people and Luis Enrique

YOAN VALATEFE

Talking about PSG, until next June 30, is talking, of course, about

Kylian Mbappé

.

But the team that Luis Enrique coaches is also much more than the talented French striker.

The former coach and former coach of Barça has known how to bet on the incorporation of young talents and has also found in another former Barça player,

Ousmane Dembélé

, the best teammate for his great star.

El

Mosquito

seems to have finally gotten rid of the plague of injuries that undermined his time as a Barcelona player and has accumulated 12 assists in the 32 games he has played this season.

Less presence, on the other hand, has had

Marco Asensio

who has not quite convinced the Asturian and who, after being out for two and a half months due to a foot injury, has now returned to the dry dock due to some muscle problems.

At the back, Brazilian

Lucas Beraldo

, who arrived at the club last winter, has become a fundamental piece even though he is only 20 years old.

His progression has been dazzling since he debuted in 2022 with Sao Paulo.

On the right wing, meanwhile, he has the presence of

Achraf Hakimi

who combines his defensive qualities with a not inconsiderable contribution in attack.

Under the sticks, of course, the undisputed starter is the Italian

Gianluigi Donnarumma

, despite the fact that his game with his feet is not at all as good as his coach would like.

Hence, precisely, he opted to incorporate former Barça player

Arnau Tenas

last summer, but the goalkeeper, trained in Barça's youth ranks, has only played three games this season.

He is in a learning period.

In the midfield, meanwhile, the Parisian team also has another young talent who has signed a rapid rise to the elite:

Warren Zaïre-Emery

.

This footballer, who practically just turned 18, was the youngest debutant in the history of the entity when he debuted with PSG at just 16 years and five months and has already played with the French national team.

As for another midfielder well known to Spanish fans,

Fabián Ruiz

, his presence in the midfield has been somewhat intermittent and, in the French team's last two duels in Ligue1, he has not even had minutes.

A Dortmund adrift

INA FASSBENDERAFP

Since 2015, during Jürgen Klopp

's last season

,

Borussia Dortmund

had not experienced such a turbulent situation.

Not only on the grass, where the team shows a desperate irregularity, but also in the offices.

With the coach and the executive director at the starting gate, that exemplary Dortmund of a decade ago is adrift today.

20 points from the lead in the Bundesliga, the only plausible objective until the end of the year will be to get a ticket for the next Champions League.

And thus ensure economic survival.

If they do not comply with this premise, the danger of becoming a midfield team seems more than real in the Ruhr area.

Yesterday, after defining Atlético as "a small monster in the playoffs",

Edin Terzic

had to face some malicious question regarding the absence of his best footballers in the German team.

Julian Brandt, Mats Hummels, Niklas Süle, Emre Can and Nico Schlotterbeck

do not count for Julian Nagelsmann, who has only called up

Niclas Füllkrug

for the friendlies against

France

and

the Netherlands

.

In reality, the journalists not only intended to analyze the decline of this Borussia, but also to address another underlying issue.

How is it possible that Dortmund wants to hire Nagelsmann as a replacement for Terzic if he himself does not trust these players for the Euro Cup?

Hans-Joachim Watzke

, one of the longest-serving

CEOs

in European football, with 23 seasons in office,

should answer that question .

However, the executive who made

Erling Haaland or Jude Bellingham

explode has already announced his departure in 2025. Most likely, his departure will be joined by that of

Matthias Sammer

- historic captain of the champion team in 1997 - who had been serving as an advisor. since 2018. Without them, reconstruction seems even more uncertain.

Almost 10 months after that 2-2 against

Mainz

, which kept them from the Bundesliga title on the last day, the criticism against Terzic continues to mark Dortmund's daily life.

Two notable disappointments had to be added to the team's poor play.

Gio Reyna

, called upon to lead the project, had to go on loan a month ago to

Nottingham Forest

.

And top scorer

Sebastian Haller

only made four starts in the summer before missing the last two months with an ankle injury.

The league defeats against Bayern, Stuttgart and Leipzig and the cup elimination against

Sebastian Hoeness

's team diminished the enthusiasm of the noisy Südtribüne.

The arrival in January of

Jadon Sancho

, added to the quality touches of

Hummels and Brandt

, were enough against PSV.

But this Dortmund, where the only player who has shone above average is

Gregor Kobel

, their goalkeeper, still has too many things to improve to surprise Atlético.