GENEVA: All five former Champions League winners were put into the same half of the draw on Friday, setting up a possible semi-final pairing between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

Real Madrid, Juventus, Barcelona, Chelsea and Bayern Munich who have combined to win 26 European Cups will whittle down one side of the draw to reach the final on Aug 23 at the Stadium of Light in Lisbon.

The other side will see three-time finalists Atltico Madrid face Leipzig and Paris Saint-Germain meet Atalanta. Leipzig and Atalanta are newcomers to this stage.

The single-leg quarterfinal matches will be played on four straight evenings from Aug 12-15 to start a mini-tournament without fans in Portugal. The semi-finals are scheduled for Aug 17-18.

Four quarter-finalists are still to be decided, all involving the former champions. Juventus trail Lyon 1-0 ahead of their round of 16 meeting next month in Turin. The winners of the two-leg series will play either Real Madrid or Manchester City in the last eight. City won 2-1 in Spain in February.

Barcelona and Napoli also have a game to play in Spain, tied at 1-1, before heading to Portugal. The winners will likely get a quarter-final match against Bayern, which won 3-0 at Chelsea in the first leg.

Those four outstanding games will be played on Aug 7 and 8, hosted by the home teams — Barcelona, Bayern, Juventus and Man City.

The other half of the draw was much more straightforward with all four quarter-finalists set before the coronavirus pandemic shut down European football.

The single-leg quarter-finals and semi-finals were both drawn on Friday, putting Ronaldo and his Juventus team-mates on course to meet Messi and Barcelona.

Football’s most prestigious club competition will resume after a break of nearly five months because of Covid-19, and teams will restart at different stages in their preparation.

Bayern finished off a league and cup double after Germany’s early restart in May. Still, it has a one-month gap between hosting Chelsea and the end of the domestic season.

Chelsea have also somewhat affected the Atletico-Leipzig quarter-final match. Forward Timo Werner declined to end the season with Leipzig after agreeing to a $68 million move to Chelsea. Werner cannot play for his new club until next season.

Atlanta and PSG are in strikingly different situations. Atalanta have won six straight games since the Serie A restart in June and has seven more to play, including at Juventus on Saturday. PSG have not played since March 11 but retained their Ligue 1 title when the league declared an early end.

The French side has only two domestic cup finals to play this month before facing Atalanta.

Also, Real Madrid and Barcelona are in a tight race for the Spanish league title, Juventus will likely seal another Serie A title and Man City also have advanced to the FA Cup semi-finals.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2020