Barcelona will meet Napoli this evening (Tuesday) at 22:00 in the round of 16 final of the Champions League and will hope to advance to the next stage in the elite enterprise on the continent. The previous game between the two teams in Diego Armando Maradona ended in 1:1 and the champions of Spain and Italy hope to save their season and qualify for the big 8.
Barcelona lineup: Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Joao Cancelo, Ronald Araujo, Pau Coversy, Jules Conde, Andreas Christensen, Ilkay Gundoin, Fermin Lopes, Lamin Yamal, Rafinha and Robert Lewandowski.
Naples lineup: Alex Mert, Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Amir Rahmani, Juan Jesus, Marui Roy, Hamed Junior Traore, Stanislav Lobotka, Andre Zambo Angisa, Matteo Politano, Habitza Cabrezadalia and Victor Osiman.
“Victory or disaster”, read the headline in ‘Ace’ before the decisive game. “Barça’s future and present in one game. Relegation from the Champions League could mean Xavi’s dismissal and non-qualification for the World Cup. The club counted in the budget the qualification for the quarter and failure to qualify will open a hole of 10 million euros”, they added.
“Quarter or destruction”, it was written in ‘Marka’. “Xavi’s team must not fail in an event that is huge on a sporting and economic level,” they added. In the Catalan ‘Sport’ they wrote: “Victory is essential. Barca need to win to return to the quarter-finals after four years. Prestige, economic capacity and reliability of the Catalan project are on the agenda”.
In Spain it is written that Barcelona can believe that they will move to the quarter-final stage on the background of their history after they finished 1:1 in the first match against Napoli in European establishments. In the last two head-to-head meetings between the teams in Europe, the first game ended 1:1, like this season, and in the second leg Barca won and qualified.
Barcelona met the Blues in the round of 16 of the Europa League in 2021/22 and the first match ended 1:1, while in the second leg in Italy they won 2:4. The same was the case in the 2019/20 season when the teams met in the round of 16 of the Champions and the first game ended 1:1, with the Blaugrana winning 1:3 in the second leg.
Another figure in Barcelona’s favor is the fact that they have often advanced without losing the first away game in a knockout in the Champions League. According to ‘Opta’ data, the Catalan team advanced to the next stage in 20 of the 21 cases in which they avoided an away loss in the first leg of the Champions League.
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