CHELSEA could make Champions League history in May – by winning the competition and only playing fellow English sides in the knock-out phase.
The Blues’ sixth placed finish means they will face one from Newcastle, PSG, Qarabag and Monaco in the last 16.
Newcastle’s pairing with the Azerbaijan minnows, thrashed 6-0 at Liverpool on Wednesday, makes Eddie Howe’s team huge favourites to progress, with a 50-50 chance of them drawing Chelsea.
And Uefa’s new seeded draw model means that, for now, Chelsea’s path to glory in Budapest on May 30 could entail only games against English sides.
If the West Londoners did progress against Howe’s men, their quarter-final opponents are scheduled to be either the third or fourth-placed side in the initial league phase table.
They were Liverpool, closely followed by Spurs, meaning – assuming they both won their last 16 ties – it would be an all-English quarter-final affair.
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If either Arsenal or Manchester City are in the same half – on what Uefa have dubbed either the “blue” or “silver” pathway – then Chelsea would play them in the semi-final.
That would allow two English sides to be in the other half of the draw, with one of them eventually qualifying to meet Chelsea in the Puskas Arena.
In 2008, when England had four representatives, all of them only exited at the hands of fellow Prem sides.
Liverpool ousted Arsenal 5-3 on aggregate after an engrossing quarter-final tie, only to be eliminated 4-3 on aggregate at Chelsea after the hosts scored twice in extra-time.
But Chelsea, infamously, lost the penalty shoot-out against Manchester United in Moscow, after John Terry slipped taking the spot-kick which would have lifted the trophy.
The full pathway to the final will only become clear after the last 16 draw on February 27.
For now, though, Chelsea could do something truly unprecedented – and which would make a third Champions League triumph perhaps the sweetest of them all.
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