Blown EL: Schick could return to Roma or Ronaldo could challenge Lewandowski in the first round of the play-offs

The Europa League has never been able to match the quality of the teams in the Champions League, but this year it will be quite close to it. Barcelona, Juventus, Manchester United, Arsenal and Sevilla will be fighting for the prize. And the first round will already be interesting.

The first round of the knockout phase of the play-offs will pit the third teams from the Champions League groups against the second from the Europa League. The opening game will be played on the ground of the clubs from the LM, and the qualifiers will qualify for the eighth-finals of the EL.

But the first round may paradoxically be harder than the second. After all, brands like Barcelona, Juventus, Sevilla and Ajax have been relegated from the Champions League, supplemented by the erratic Leverkusen, Salzburg, Sporting Lisbon and Shakhtar Donetsk.

The journey through the first round will certainly not be a walk in the park for them. In the pool, brands like Manchester United (finishing behind Sociedad), AS Roma (second behind Real Betis) and Monaco (one match behind Ferencváros) await.

Six of the eight second-placed teams are from the Top 5 leagues. In addition to the three mentioned above, there are also France’s Nantes and Rennes and Germany’s Union Berlin, and from the smaller leagues, the strong PSV Edinhoven and Denmark’s Midtjylland.

Possible showdowns

Juventus’ confrontation with Manchester United looks interesting, Cristiano Ronaldo would return to Turin as a rival. Historically, interesting battles have taken place between the Red Devils and Barcelona, this year it would be a duel between Ronaldo and Robert Lewandowski.

AS Roma as last year’s Conference League winner cannot be underestimated and Barcelona have a lot to give back for 2018, Patrik Schick with Bayer Leverkusen would return to Rome again where he gained valuable experience.

Source: UEFA