With the Quarter-Finals all lined up (and the Semi's possibly predictable), I decided to look back on previous years to see if I could notice a trend, and perhaps go one step further to guessing which teams will go through to the last four. My theory is that it is generally the same "big" teams who feature in the latter stages. Lets see if I'm wrong again...
2006/07
Quarter-Final teams (2007/08 Quarter-Finalists in bold): AC Milan, Bayern Munich, PSV Eindhoven, Liverpool, Roma, Manchester United, Chelsea, Valencia.
So only half there who are in this year's last eight, but if the three English teams make it through, the semi-finals will be indentical with those of last season, if you swap AC Milan with Barcelona or Schalke (Barcelona then), the winner of which will play United.
2005/06
Arsenal, Juventus, Lyon, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Villarreal, Benfica, Barcelona
Umm, looks like my theory is already unravelling. Arsenal and Barca of course met in the final, which could again happen this year.
2004/05
Liverpool, Juventus, Lyon, PSV Eindhoven, Chelsea, Bayern Munich, AC Milan, Inter Milan
Just two again who will feature in this year's quarters, however, it's Chelsea and Liverpool who met in one of 2005's semis, and of course can face each other in this campaign's last four.
I'm just going to stop here, because quite frankly I have been proved wrong yet again. In this year only Chelsea and Arsenal featured, and the season before, only Manchester United and Barcelona were consistent with the teams we are seeing in the quarters this time around.
So while there are some similarities, with the English sides particularly prevalant in the last eight, there are new sides breaking through to the European elite each year.
The semi-finals however, well that's a completely different story! For another time maybe...
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