Niko Kovac reacts to facing Hansi Flick’s Barcelona | OneFootball

FC Barcelona advanced to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League with a 3-1 win over SL Benfica in the second leg of their Round of 16 tie, winning this round 4-1 on aggregate.

In this next round of the competition, the Blaugranes are set to face another familiar rival, Borussia Dortmund, whom they had already defeated 3-2 back in the League Phase in December.

However, the Dortmund side that the Catalans will be facing next month will be significantly different from the one they faced before, as the Germans have undergone a managerial change since then, replacing Nuri Sahin with Niko Kovac on the bench.

Thus, the upcoming quarter-final tie will be special for the coaches of both sides, as they have already worked with one another. In fact, as Mundo Deportivo has reported, the BVB manager highlighted his relationship with the Barcelona manager as he spoke to the press after winning 2-1 against the French side Lille to advance to remain alive in the UCL:

Kovac expressed his happiness at the prospect of facing Flick: “It’s nice because we worked together—he was my assistant—and now we will compete against each other.”

The Dortmund coach also praised the Barcelona team: “It’s a great club, a great team, with fantastic players.”

The German coach was also aware of the difficulty of this tie: “We need to achieve a good result in the first leg, away from home. In the quarter-finals, anything is possible—any team can reach the semi-finals. We hope it will be us.”

Photo by Florencia Tan Jun/Getty Images

As Kovac highlighted, Flick was his assistant when he was the head coach at Bayern Munich. Furthermore, the current Barcelona coach was also the one who replaced Kovac when he left the Bavarian club in November 2019.

This appointment catapulted Flick to the spotlight, as he led the Munich team to one Champions League, two Bundesliga titles, a German Cup, a German Super Cup, a European Super Cup, and a Club World Cup during his time.