It could have been worse. Nyon's urn that opens up to Milan, the only Italian survivor, the road to the eighth final against Atletico Madrid was a clement urn after all. Let's be clear, Simeone's Colchoneros are an excellent team, which in La Liga runs at the infernal pace of Barcelona (the two teams are paired in the lead on 43 points) and which won their Champions League group in slippers, led by the extraordinary Diego Costa, who is succeeding in the titanic enterprise of not making the Colombian Falcao regret.
But it could have been worse, looking at the other possible pairings. Some (Bayern Monaco and Real Madrid) would almost certainly have been fatal to this patched-up version of the Rossoneri. And the "almost" is just a kind obeisance to the rhetoric, undeniably true in its own way, which wants the ball to be round. All the others, at different levels, would have put Allegri's Milan in front of the need to carry out an authentic feat to bypass the gauntlet of the round of XNUMX.
Atletico Madrid, a sensational case of a team that continues, at least here, to be underestimated, despite having been running for at least a season and a half at the pace of the great Spanish teams, is one of these teams. Milan start underdogs, but, at least from the start, they can play for it.
The other pairings promise sparks, starting with Manchester City-Barcelona, the head-on clash between two of the richest and most talented teams in the world, passing through the challenge between two strong points from Inter's recent past, that Galatasaray-Chelsea which pits Mancini and Mourinho up to the eighth for fine palates that pits Wenger's Arsenal (never lucky in terms of draws) and Guardiola's Bayern Munich.
The other matches are more targeted: Olympiakos-Manchester United, Bayer Leverkusen-PSG, Schalke 04-Real Madrid, Zenit-Borussia Dortmund. Dates: 18-19 and 25-26 February for the outward journey, 11-12 and 18-19 March for the return leg.
