FC Barcelona, current European champion, will find out this Tuesday (1pm) their roadmap to the San Mamés final. UEFA will carry out the draw for the quarter-final and semi-final pairings, with the Blaugrana as the seeded team. Jonatan Giráldez's team will be able to face the Dutch Ajax, the Norwegian Brann, or the Swedish Häcken. A draw in which, for the first time in history, there will be no German team among the best eight.
FC Barcelona finished as the undefeated leader of their group, giving up only a draw against Benfica on the last day of the group stage. The Portuguese team, being from the same group, will not be able to face the Catalans. In Pot 1 there will be, in addition to Barça, the other three teams that finished in first position in the group stage: Chelsea, Olympique Lyonnais and Paris Saint-Germain.
The first in each group will face a second from another group, this being the only limitation of the draw. The four teams classified in second position are Benfica, Brann, Ajax and Häcken. Of the three possible rivals that await them, FC Barcelona has never faced any of them, so it will be an unprecedented duel.
It will be a pure draw and the team whose ball is drawn in first position will play the first leg at home. The quarter-final ties will be played during the month of March, on 19-20 for the first leg, and on 27-28 for the second leg. A month later, in April, the semifinals will take place and the grand final will be on May 25 in Bilbao, at the San Mamés stadium.
The rival that is highest in the UEFA ranking (12) of the three. Runners-up in the Swedish league, it is the team with the most history that the Blaugrana can play. Under the name Göteborg they reached the quarterfinals twice a decade ago. In 2021, it merged with Häcken and changed its name and stadium.
In his ranks he has had internationals with Sweden such as Angeldahl and Blackstenius. Now it has the veteran Elin Rubensson, 30 years old, who was part of the team that came in third place in the last World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
Häcken has had to fight in a difficult group, along with Chelsea, Real Madrid and Paris FC. And he has done it with honor, beating the Madrid team and forcing a draw away from home against the 'blues'. A notable feat considering that the only team that the English team did not manage to beat in all of 2023 was FC Barcelona, in the Champions League semifinals.
The Dutch league champion is number 24 in the UEFA ranking and has three league titles and five Cup titles under his belt. They finished in second position, behind Paris Saint-Germain, but they had a chance to be first in the group until the last day.
Ajax has made the Johan Cruyff Arena a fortress, adding one of the best attendance records of the entire group stage. Their best historical performance was reaching the round of 16 in the 2018-19 season (before the implementation of the group stage).
Brann is the most modest team of all and the only one that has never before broken into the 16 best teams in Europe. It has the lowest coefficient of all those qualified for the group stage and is ranked 27th in the UEFA ranking.
Despite their inexperience, the Norwegian team has managed to leave out two veterans such as Slavia Prague and Sankt Pölten and was able to get a creditable draw (2-2) against the almighty Olympique de Lyon after equaling a 0-2 against. It has two League titles and two Cups under its belt and Andrine Hegerberg, the older sister of Lyon star Ada Hegerberg, plays in its ranks.
