Champions League draw comes with Uefa hoping virus doesn’t ruin plans for Lisbon finale

Atalanta and RB Leipzig are through to the last eight along with PSG and Atletico, while the remaining last 16, second legs see Juventus face Lyon, Manchester City take on Madrid, Bayern Munich face Chelsea and Barcelona meet Napoli

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Uefa will present the last-16 draws of its continental competitions on Thursday. Photo: Reuters

Published: 1:02pm, 9 Jul 2020Updated: 1:02pm, 9 Jul 2020

Four months on from the last match in this season’s Champions League, the draw for the final eight will be held on Friday amid ongoing uncertainty about how safe it will be to play out the competition in Lisbon as planned, and with four last-16 ties still to be completed.

It was on March 11 that Paris Saint-Germain beat Borussia Dortmund 2-0 behind closed doors to qualify for the quarter-finals for the first time in four years and their players celebrated wildly with jubilant supporters who had gathered outside the Parc des Princes.

The same night, holders Liverpool were knocked out by Atletico Madrid in front of 52,000 fans at Anfield, a mass gathering which British scientists later said had aided the acceleration of the coronavirus pandemic.

Within days football across Europe was suspended and it was only in mid-June that Uefa was able to unveil a way of finishing its flagship tournament, the main economic driver for European football’s governing body – before the pandemic, it estimated gross commercial revenue from its competitions this season would be €3.25 billion (US$3.69 billion).

And so the plan is to go to the Portuguese capital for a unique “final eight” straight knockout tournament from the quarter-finals onwards, starting on August 12 and finishing with the final at Benfica’s Estadio da Luz on August 23.

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