José Mourinho will return to the Santiago Bernabéu at the end of the month to threaten Real Madrid’s survival in the Champions League at the helm of Benfica … that took the whites’ colors this week at the Estádio Da Luz and sent them to the play-offs, while Atlético will experience two nights of Bruges after the playoff draw held this Friday at the House of European Football paired the red and white team with the current runners-up of the Belgian league. The first leg matches will be played on February 17 and 18, while the return matches will be held on the 24th and 25th of the same month.
The Frenchman Robert Pirés, former footballer for Arsenal and Villarreal, served as the innocent hand of the lottery that named the sixteen teams that managed to overcome the screening of the league phase of the highest continental competition but that did not manage to access the ‘top 8’, which condemned them to face a double revalidation that will further burden their already oversaturated calendars.
Real Madrid avoided Bodo/Glimt, an attractive Norwegian team that sealed its passport for the play-offs with a formidable sprint in the last three days that allowed it to draw against Borussia Dortmund and defeat Manchester City and Atlético in succession, and thereby avoided a trip to the Arctic Circle to play under extreme temperatures and on synthetic grass, issues that are not trivial at all, but in exchange they will have to face each other again. Mourinho, the tempestuous coach who ruled the destiny of the whites between 2010 and 2013, a time that Chamartín dynamited and in which he had at his command the current coach of the fifteen-time European champion, Álvaro Arbeloa, with whom he merged on Wednesday in a very warm hug before giving him a very severe lesson.
With the first leg to be played in Da Luz, a clash that Asencio and Rodrygo will miss due to suspension, the morbidity will increase exponentially with Mourinho’s return at the end of the month to a Santiago Bernabéu that paid homage to him but also looked at him with suspicion, perhaps in equal parts, and in which he left in any case an indelible mark.
The coach from Setúbal, who won a League, a Copa del Rey and a Spanish Super Cup with Real Madrid but was never able to lead them to the ‘orejona’, will once again step on the pitch of the merengue coliseum for the first time as a rival of his former team and will do so at the head of a Benfica that thoroughly stabbed the whites on Wednesday with a victory to which their goalkeeper, the Ukrainian Trubin, put the icing on the cake with a goal in the last gasp that meant the qualification of the red team for the round of 32 and preluded a fight with Real Madrid that will once again take emotions to the limit. “Benfica played a great game, we already know what awaits us,” said Emilio Butragueño, director of Institutional Relations for the whites.
It so happens that Real Madrid and Benfica, who played three unforgettable duels in the ancient European Cup back in the sixties of the last century that left the Portuguese team in a much better position, had not faced each other for 61 years and will now have three consecutive fights in one month. If they win the challenge against the Lisbon squad, Real Madrid will face Manchester City or Sporting de Portugal in the round of 16, whose draw, like the rest of the rounds, will be held on February 27.
From Barça’s nightmare to Atlético’s threat
Nor did the Atlético fan have an easy choice when it came to choosing between a Galatasaray that has in its ranks figures of the caliber of Victor Osimhen, Ilkay Gündogan or Leroy Sané, but whose collective performance has so far been more unstable than that of a Brugge that already compromised Barça a lot in its stadium last November (3-3) and that has strongholds like Vanaken, Stankovic or Vermat capable of putting the soldiers of the team in trouble. Cholo. «We know the characteristics of the Bruges boys. At home they are strong. They have an important local mentality. It will be a tough, difficult game and we hope to take them where we hurt them,” the Atlético coach remarked this Friday.
Atlético and Bruges have previously crossed swords eight times, four of them in the top continental competition, with a balance of three wins per side and two draws. The most recent precedents date back to the 2022-23 Champions League, when Simeone’s team succumbed 2-0 at the Jan Breydel Stadium and later drew 0-0 with the rojiblancos at the Metropolitano. The San Blas-Canillejas fort will once again be the great ally of the colchoneros in the return leg to try to certify their place in the second round. Liverpool or Tottenham would await them there.
-Playoff pairings:
Benfica-Real Madrid
Bodo/Glimt-Inter
Monaco-PSG
Qarabag-Newcastle
Galatasaray-Juventus
Bruges-Atletico
Borussia Dortmund-Atalanta
Olympiacos-Bayer Leverkusen
