Pep Guardiola’s Real Madrid rivalry headlines heavyweight Champions League draw we’ve all been waiting for

Guardiola’s pursuit of the trophy with City comes against the grandest and most symbolic of his rivals

This is what we’ve been waiting for, in more than one sense. This enticing unpredictability is the glorious flipside of the group stage’s problematic predictability, but what is so exciting about this season’s Champions League last-16 draw is how fresh it is.

It has a diversity, and none of the ties we’ve become so used to. In the cases where there is a certain familiarity, it only breeds competitive vitality. The pick of that – in so many senses – is another meeting between Pep Guardiola and Real Madrid, the club that will have consumed so much of his football life as a Barcelona supporter, player and manager.

And what really elevates this tie with Manchester City is the different relationships both have with the Champions League knockouts. While it has felt like Guardiola has fought over every inch of knockout football and had so many long nights of the soul since last winning the competition in 2011, he faces the club who more than any other seem to have the trophy fall into their hands almost by happenstance.

This is the history that so hangs over this tie that so threatens to disrupt any sense of “form” in the way the knockout ties so gloriously do, even as it seems circumstances might actually fall for City in the Champions League. Guardiola’s grand pursuit of the trophy for the club now faces the grandest and most symbolic of rivals.

Some of this is almost inverted with Liverpool. They happened to win the Champions League while on a grander journey towards that long-awaited domestic title, that may feel like its coming to its end as the knockout stages start, putting them in an interesting mental position as they face an Atletico Madrid that have had almost as much of a neurosis about the competition as Guardiola.

Under Diego Simeone, they have of course proven the most complicated of opponents for so many – but not yet European champions. That will have only been deepened because this so seemed set for a triumphant domestic season, but has instead become a transitional one.

The latter now finally feels like it’s happening at Chelsea, having actually initially overachieved in Frank Lampard’s first season. That makes Bayern Munich a huge test, except for the fact they are going through similar troubles of their own. We don’t even know if they’ll have picked a long-term manager by then.

It was precisely because of this competition – and qualifying for it again – that Tottenham Hotspur felt they had to make that fateful decision on their own great manager in Mauricio Pochettino, but familiarity in another sense that may decide their own tie with RB Leipzig.

The Bundesliga leaders will be a much tougher draw than many expect, but they do lack a lot of what Spurs now have: experience in this competition. It does have a feel of one of those that comes down to that canniness. That is what this Tottenham squad have developed over the past few seasons, that is what Jose Mourinho has in abundance.

All the English sides have been handed testing draws in the last-16 (Getty)

There’s also the pleasing element that teams with a lot less experience – like Atalanta-Valencia – have a direct route to the quarter-finals. Many might carp that their an easy tie for whoever makes it true but, beyond the fact that could be underestimating them, a greater diversity of names is all the more important in a competition with so many of the same clubs – especially at that stage.

It is why the competition does resemble something of a “super cup” if not yet a super league, since part of its recent excitement and chaos has been the biggest clubs crashing against each other. It is also why some of those biggest names – like Juventus, like City, like Bayern and like Lionel Messi let alone Barcelona – are waiting so long for the trophy itself. This is what they’re building towards.

It just more emotional weight that adds to this wait, and makes this last-16 draw, and the beginning of the sudden-death stage, so full of life. It suddenly looks worth it.