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Next week will see first-leg matches in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, the most important competition in European club football. One of the stellar matches will be the one that pits FC Barcelona against Bayern Munich.

This qualifying-round match is expected to be fiercely disputed. Barcelona is first in La Liga and their game is praised by everyone. But Bayern is a team of fighters who are difficult to beat and have never been beaten by the Catalan side in a European competition. What's more, they eliminated Sporting Lisbon with a convincing 12-1 aggregate in the last round of competition at the beginning of March.

Barcelona and Bayern Munich are two legendary, classic European football teams, making this qualifier even more interesting. Barcelona has won the Champions League twice, while Bayern has four victories to its name, including three in a row (1974, 1975 and 1976). Franz Beckenbauer, one of the best players of all times and the current chairman of Bayern, played a pivotal role in all three wins.

Barça and Bayern are both rich clubs with century-old traditions and more than 100,000 members each. They are also both sporting symbols of territories with their own identity: Catalonia and Bavaria, respectively.