First Leg of the Round of 16 Champions league matches
February 25,2024
After a long two month hiatus the UEFA Champions league is finally back with the Round of 16 matches. The long journey now begins at Wembley Stadium in London where the final will be played. The first round of matches were played between February 13 and 14. The surprise package from Group A; FC Copenhagen played against the current champions, Manchester City at home in Denmark. Copenhagen put up a good fight, but Manchester City was just too good at the moment and won 1-3 away. “City always gets drawn the easy teams,” Said Senior Anthony RIvera. In the other leg, Real Madrid traveled to Germany to face off against RB Leipzig. Leipzig took advantage of their homeground and were able to score in only two minutes, but unfortunately for them it was called offside. Only three minutes after the second half was resumed Madrid scored to make 1-0. Madrid would hold on to 0-1 and win away to have a slight advantage entering the return leg. PSG faced Real Sociedad who they beat 2-0 by goals from Mbappe and Barcola. Meanwhile Lazio would proceed the biggest shock by beating Bayern 1-0.
The second round of matches were played between February 20th and 21st. PSV from the Netherlands clashed with Borussia Dortmund with the match ending in a stalemate. At the same time the first big headliner game would be played between the sub champion of last season’s champions league, Inter MIlian; against Atletico De Madrid. Inter would dominate the whole match, with Altetico not having a single shot on goal. Atletico’s defense held Inter till the 78th minute when Marko Arnautovic broke through and scored the only goal of the match to give Inter a slight advantage going into the second leg.
On the last match day, Fc Porto welcomed Arsenal for their champions league clash. Porto started off strong, but were lacking in finishing. The whole game in general was very dull. But to add some late drama to the game. Porto was able to score with the last kick of the ball and win 1-0.The Last game of the round of 16 first leg was a headliner game; Napoli vs Barcelona, both teams are in very similar situations, both won their retrospective domestic leagues last season pretty comfortably. Now both teams are not faring too well in their domestic league and will very likely not win any title this season. Barcelona started the game with attack after attack, forcing Napoli keeper, Alex Meret to pull off incredible saves. Barca would finally get their sought after goal by Robert Lewandowski at the one hour mark. 15 minutes later Victor Osimhen would equalize for Napoli and the match ended 1-1. “ I feel like that we deserved to win, but the defensive error cost us the win” Said Senior Ernesto Lanaverde.The second leg matches of the round of 16 will be played between March 5th to March 13.