English football hopes that the four Premier League clubs who have made it to the quarterfinal draw will avoid each other on Friday and maybe all make it to the semifinals.
But that would mean one of Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea or Arsenal facing Barcelona.
Former champions Bayern Munich and FC Porto and 2006 semifinalist Villarreal are the other teams going into Friday’s draw at Uefa headquarters at Nyon, Switzerland.
But the Premier League clubs, who could meet each other in the first unseeded round of the draw, are eyeing up a repeat of last season’s achievement when three of them made it to the semifinal and Manchester United eventually beat Chelsea on penalties in Moscow in the first all-English final.
Defending champion Man United and Barcelona go into the draw as the bookmakers’ joint favorites at 5-2 and neutral fans might see that as a great final in Rome on May 27 with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Dimitar Berbatov and Carlos Tevez taking on Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto’o.
Although the English champion has seen its Premier League advantage cut to four points, Barcelona is six points clear in the Spanish league.
But Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard, whose team’s odds are 6-1 with William Hill, said that the other seven should be scared of his team after the Reds beat Real Madrid 4-0 in the first knockout round last week and followed that up with a 4-1 Premier League victory at United.
”We are not running scared of anybody. We will take who we get, and believe that we are going to go through,” Gerrard said.
”If you are asking me about a fear factor in the Champions League, then I think it is the other seven teams in the draw who are going to have concerns about coming up against us after that Real Madrid result.”
A five-time winner of the trophy, Liverpool has become used to facing fellow English clubs in the Champions League having played Chelsea three different times and also knocking out Arsenal last season.
”The way I look at it, we are going to have to play them sooner or later, so it does not matter if it is now, the semifinals or the final,” he said.
Man United ousted Italian champion Inter Milan in the previous round and Chelsea knocked out Juventus, which means there are no Italian sides left in the competition.
But four-time winner Bayern made it to the last eight with an overwhelming 12-1 aggregate triumph over Sporting Lisbon although it has lost striker Miroslav Klose through injury.
Having scored seven Champions League goals this season and 10 in the Bundesliga, Klose injured his ankle in Bayern’s league victory over VfL Bochum on Saturday and needed surgery which could rule him out for two months. His usual partner up front, Luca Toni, has missed the last five league games with an Achilles’ tendon injury but hopes to return to training later this week.
Porto and Villarreal are the outsiders of the eight, who are made up of five winners, two runners up and a semifinalist.
Villarreal, which ousted Panathinaikos in the previous round, made it to the semifinal three years on its debut, losing 1-0 on aggregate to Arsenal, and is hoping to make it at least that far again.
”We have been in the Champions League before and we are focused on getting as far as possible,” said the Spanish club’s Chilean coach, Manuel Pellegrini, who has been at the club since 2004. ”We will try to keep playing the football we showed we could play in the second half against Panathinaikos.
In our last campaign we didn’t deserve to go out as semifinalists.
We should have been in the final. That is in the past, though. We now have to focus on our next opponents and try to beat them.” The first legs of the quarterfinals are April 7 and 8 and the returns are April 14 and 15. — Sapa-AP