Arsenal Draw Barcelona, Tottenham Paired With Milan In Champions League Round Of 16

With the UEFA Champions League Round of 16 draw in the books and the competition taking off until February, it is time to analyze and anticipate the world’s premier club competition.The 16 remaining teams have been paired up and will play a two leg tie with the winner advancing to the Quarterfinals. With most of the world’s best and most famous clubs in the competition, there are scintillating match-ups all around the tournament.

Not to be overlooked is a pairing of Manchester United and Olympique Marseille. The French club topped Ligue 1 a year ago and have strengthened their squad with the additions of players like Loic Remy. After a slow start to the season, Marseille are picking up steam and may be the second best team in the group of runners up. Of course that may not mean much at Old Trafford against a United team that is leading the English Premier League despite not hitting their top form yet. Whether Lucho Gonzalez can find space and work on picking apart the United back line will likely determine the chances of Marseille, which is quite the challenge for the Argentinian.

Next up for UEFA is to determine who will play on Tuesday and Wednesday in each of the two weeks allocated for each leg, meaning that two matches will be played each Tuesday and Wednesday for two weeks. Once that is done, the clubs will have the first knockout stage of the UEFA Champions League before them and they can get back to focusing on league play before European competition heats back up in February.

The Round of 16 comes on the heels of the Group Stage, in which there were eight, four-team groups with the group winners and group runners up advancing to the knockout stages. In the Round of 16, each of the eight group winners will be matched up against one of the eight group runners up, although they cannot be drawn against the team who also advanced from their group or another team from their country. Here are the 16 teams who have advanced to the knockout stages by group winner and group runners up status.