Who will Barça be playing next in the Champions League? We will be finding out in this Monday’s last 16 draw, to be held as always in the Swiss town of Nyon, home of UEFA (12pm CET).
The good news is that as Group H winners, Barça will avoid the other seven group winners. In fact, as three of those are fellow Liga teams (Real Madrid, Real Sociedad and Atlético Madrid), they could only have played four of those teams anyway (Manchester City, Arsenal, Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund).
The bad news is that there are some strong looking sides among the seven that Barça could face (they cannot meet Porto because they already played them in the group stage).
Possible opponents
The seven teams that Barça could meet are the following:
PSV Eindhoven
From the smallest city ever to have a Champions League winning club, PSV haven’t won the Dutch league since 2018, but they are ten points clear at the top of the Eredivisie this time round. Barça last met PSV in the Champions League group stage in 2018-19, winning both times, and a meeting with them would present the opportunity to catch up with old friends Luuk de Jong and Sergiño Dest.
FC Copenhagen
Currently the highest ranked club in all of Scandinavia, FC København surprisingly finished above Galatasaray and Manchester United to reach the knockout stage of this competition for just the second time. Barça have only met them once before, in the 2010–11 group stage. According to our survey (below), the Danes are the team that Culers are most hoping that Barça will be facing.
Inter Milan
Inter are three-time winners of this competition, most recently in 2010, when they beat Barça in the semi-finals. And just two years ago, Inter were the side that qualified from the group stage at Barça’s expense. So there are scores to settle against the club that currently tops Serie A.
RB Leipzig
The club that is just a decade and a half old has quickly established itself as a major force in German football, and in that strange Covid-affected season they marched all the way to the semi-finals of the Champions League, eventually losing to PSG. They are the only potential opponent that Barça has never played before, and also, because of the different conditioning factors, is also the team that Barça is most likely to be drawn against (a probability of around 20% as compared to around 13% for the other teams).
Napoli
After many years as also-rans, Napoli are back among the European elite, last season winning Serie A for the first time since the Diego Maradona years over three decades earlier. And they have also become familiar opponents for Barça, for this would be the third time they have crossed paths in the 2020s.
Lazio
Another Italian club enjoying something of a rebirth in recent years, Barça have only ever met Lazio once before in a competitive match. That was in the 1975–76 UEFA Cup, which Barça won by a walkover after Lazio refused to play the second leg for political and security reasons.
Paris St Germain
There is quite a history of games between Barça and the side that has dominated French football in recent years. One famous meeting was the 1997 Cup Winners’ Cup final, but the most memorable of all has to be Barça’s amazing 6-1 comeback in 2017. A meeting with PSG would be particularly special because of the opportunity to meet former Barça player and manager Luis Enrique, now sitting on the Parisian bench.
The dates
The first legs of the last sixteen matches will be played on February 13, 14, 20 and 21. As seeds, Barça will play at home in the second leg, to be played on March 5, 6, 12 or 13.
The teams that qualify will go into a new draw for the quarter final stage, with the final itself being held at Wembley in June.
