Benfica – Borussia Dortmund

Benfica welcomes Borussia Dortmund in a Champions League 1/8-final game at the Estadio da Luz in Lisboa.

Both teams are performing in a different manner in their domestic leagues. Benfica is leading the standings in the Portuguese Primeira Liga with one point advantage in front of Porto. Rui Vitoria’s team won three of its last four games and it’s marching towards another title in the league.

Borussia Dortmund was labeled as Bayern Munich’s main contender for the Bundesliga crown, but Thomas Tuchel’s team dissapointed with its performance in the league. Dortmund are currently 4th in the Bundesliga standings, falling 15 points behind the leader Bayern Munich. If they do not improve their performance really fast, they could even miss qualification to the Champions League next season.

In the group stages of the Champion League though, Borussia Dortmund performed much better. The German team finish first in its group, although they had the competition of the current title holder Real Madrid. Dortmund won 14 points of 18 and didn’t lose neither once, finishing first in Group F. It’s about to be seen if they are going to continue with their strong performance in Europe this season.

Benfica on the other hand barely made it into the 1/8-finals. The Portuguese team finished with just one point above Besiktas at 2nd place in Group B, finishing its group stages campaign with 8 points won. The only team they managed to beat in this group was Dynamo Kyiv, who finished last in the standings.

Borussia Dortmund are the favourite in this clash, but Benfica are not a team to be underrestimated, even if their performance in the group stages was not that impressive. They still have players who are good enough to see them through to the 1/4-finals, but the same thing should be said about Dortmund as well.