Big Midweek: Barcelona v Atletico Madrid, Arsenal, Harry Kane, Arne Slot | OneFootball

It’s Champions League quarter-final time and all four ties have potential classic daubed all over them ahead of this week’s first legs.

There are the obvious charms of a heavyweight clash between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, the all-Spanish grudge match where Barcelona and Atletico Madrid – already sick of the sight of each other – clash for a fifth time since December, and then there are the two remaining English teams.

Arsenal’s trip to Sporting seemed like a mere stepping stone when the last 16 was being completed all the way back in the middle of last month, but that’s no longer quite the case as the Gunners head to Portugal looking for a response to the collapse of 50 per cent of their quadruple.

Liverpool, meanwhile, have warmed up for a trip to the defending champions by getting thrashed 4-0 and facing a swirl of stories suggesting their manager might actually resign. This is, we believe, sub-optimal preparation.

Game to watch: Barcelona v Atletico Madrid

We say game to watch, but the thing with Barcelona v Atleti is that it’s a bit like the tube. Don’t worry if you miss this one, another will be along in a minute.

This is the fifth meeting between the two sides this season and the middle of three in the space of 10 days.

Happily, the first of that quickfire threepeat in La Liga at the weekend was a suitably grumpy and bad-tempered affair that did suggest these two are already sick of the sight of each other before having to play a two-legged Champions League semi-final.

Barcelona came from behind to win that against an Atleti team who almost sh*thoused their way to a point after playing the entire second half down to 10 men.

That completed a league double for Barca against a side who in between had knocked them out of the Copa del Rey via a 4-0 win and then 3-0 defeat in February and March.

Both are here after dealing with classic Premier League springtime frauds in the last 16 and both know this should be far tougher. Barcelona’s win over Newcastle ended up on paper looking far more comprehensive than Atleti’s win over Spurs, but it wasn’t really the case.

Only in the second half of the second leg did Barca run up the score against Newcastle; Atleti had beaten silly, slippy Spurs before the 20-minute mark of the first leg.

We’re ruling nothing out here given the previous games these two have played against each other and in this competition, but what we’re ruling definitively in is more bad-tempered aggro with a very high chance of Scenes Nobody Wants To See.

Player to watch: Harry Kane

Back in training ahead of Bayern Munich’s trip to Real Madrid as he pursues glory and records both collective and individual. He already has 10 Champions League goals this season, is the leading club scorer across Europe’s top 10 leagues this year, and is on track to complete the most prolific Bundesliga season ever.

His second league title there is almost certain, with the Champions League and World Cup realistic stretch targets over a potentially career-defining few months.

We still baulk slightly at the idea that Kane has improved meaningfully as a player in Munich. To us he just looks like someone still doing much the same extraordinary things he had been doing for years and years, except now with, in general, better team-mates and weaker opponents to make it all more obviously eye-catching and even more effective.

What’s without doubt is that his status in the game now is greater than it ever was in his time at Tottenham. He was under-rated for years, and only now is he being seriously talked about as possibly the very best player in the world rather than grudgingly as a contender for best or most effective striker.

Somewhere near the very summit of the game is where he stands now, and throwing forward to the World Cup it becomes genuinely fascinating. When did England last actually have a live contender for the world’s best player heading into a major tournament? We can think of plenty of occasions when the English media might have said such things, but not many where that suggestion would come loudest from Germany.

A big performance over two legs against Real Madrid won’t do anything to quiet the talk around a player who is already now secure as an undisputed modern great, but who really could carve his name into football history over the next 12 weeks or so.

Team to watch: Arsenal

Arsenal, are you f*cking this up? It’s now back-to-back defeats for Arsenal either side of the international break that have turned a possible quadruple into a doubtful double in quick time.

The most important thing to note is that right now absolutely nothing is f*cked. There is no need to be upset. If Arsenal were going to eschew two of the baubles on offer, then the domestic cups would be they.

And while losing to Southampton is on the face of it the more harrowing misstep, it does at least come with a genuine positive absent from the Carabao final: it lessens the workload in the remaining competitions. Arsenal are now free to focus entirely on the two big competitions and, a week from now, could be sitting pretty with one foot in the Champions League semi-finals, 12 points clear in the Premier League, and everyone wondering what all the fuss was about.

There is, of course, a flipside to that where they are entering full-blown crisis mode, in danger of Champions League elimination as well, and only six points clear in the Premier League ahead of a trip to the Etihad to face a Man City side with a game in hand.

There’s not really any such thing as a low-key Champions League quarter-final, but given Arsenal’s direction of travel when this fixture was confirmed a few short weeks ago, this did look about the closest thing one might find.

It was being treated by some – not, surely, by anyone directly involved at Arsenal, to be fair – as a mere inevitable stepping stone in the pursuit of immortality.

Absolutely nobody is looking at it that way now. This has become a game where Arsenal simply must formulate a response to quell the chaos and noise that has begun to swirl around them. This is still a season that could – should, even – go down in Arsenal history rather than infamy.

But this trip to Lisbon has suddenly accrued far greater significance in how that story now unfolds from here.

Manager to watch: Arne Slot

He won’t, of course, but he is without doubt under the most severe pressure yet during a challenging season.

FA Cup quarter-final defeat at Manchester City could have been stomached; FA Cup quarter-final humiliation, not so much. That’s what the Erling Haaland-inspired 4-0 defeat turned out to be, and it would be fair to say there are easier back-to-winning-ways assignments in the game a few days later than a trip to PSG.

It’s true that PSG are not quite the force of last season, but Liverpool are barely playing the same sport as they were last season.

Top scholars and boffins have spent the last 12 months trying to work out precisely how Liverpool emerged from their last-16 trip to Paris last season with a 1-0 lead from a fearful battering; it would be even more extraordinary for them to pull something similar out of the hat this time, and another heavy defeat for Slot will push him closer to the exit than ever before.

A return to the Champions League via their domestic finish is far from certain and, loathe as Liverpool rightly are to do anything that would look like panic (because really what else can you call an April manager sacking?) it’s unthinkable for Liverpool to miss out on the Big Cup just a year after winning the Premier League title at a canter.

Football League game to watch: Wrexham v Southampton

Southampton made it abundantly clear they still consider themselves a woke Premier League team at heart, deliberately and cynically reaching the FA Cup quarter-finals just to escape the Football League’s glorious Good Friday-Easter Monday double bill.

We’re nevertheless inclined to let them off because they did at least have the common decency to do the funniest thing possible with their FA Cup quarter-final against Arsenal by winning it and unleashing frankly dangerous levels of schadenfreude into the atmosphere. Listen, fair play.

But now it’s back to the Football League grindstone with you, Saints, and a key game in the battle for play-off spots. It’s not quite as straightforward as either/or for this pair, but it’s not far off with Millwall, Middlesbrough, Ipswich and Hull all looking relatively secure above and Derby and the rest a distance away.

Of course, Southampton’s cup antics do throw up another problem for them on the run-in: one man’s games in hand are another man’s fixture pile-up.