Liverpool will travel to Milan Wednesday for a Champions League blockbuster between the Premier League heavyweight and Serie A champion Inter Milan.
The San Siro will be a familiar stadium for Liverpool. After all, the six-time European champions have already played there this season having been drawn with AC Milan in the group stage.
Liverpool beat Milan 2-1 away in December in the final group game to complete a clean sweep of six wins, becoming the first English team to do so.
It bolstered Liverpool's status as one of the favorites for a title the club last won in 2019, especially with Mohamed Salah back in its ranks after the African Cup of Nations.
Inter is also a multiple European champion – the last of its three titles came in 2010 – but is playing in the last 16 for the first time since 2011-12.
Salah has scored 11 goals in his last 11 Champions League matches, and 23 goals in 27 games in all competitions this season.
The Egyptian will meet his former teammate Edin Dzeko at the San Siro pitch, a reminder of the havoc the pair used to cause together at Roma.
After an anonymous time at Chelsea and signs of promise at Fiorentina, Salah's career really started to take off after arriving in the Italian capital in 2015.
Once firmly established as strike partners under Luciano Spalletti, Dzeko and Salah hit it off in a big way, scoring 58 goals in all competitions in 2016-17 and helping Roma to second in Serie A as an aging Francesco Totti was shunted aside.
Salah's inconsistent but at times unstoppable performances earned him a move to Merseyside, where under Jurgen Klopp he quickly became one of the world's best, for what now looks a paltry 50 million euros ($56.70 million).
"I must say, in some little way, I helped Momo become what he is now," Dzeko said in an interview published by the Daily Mail last week.
"We had a great time together in Rome ... I'm so happy for him, a great guy who deserves everything he has achieved."
Dzeko, in the meantime, looks a player reborn since making the move north from Roma in the summer and has been such a hit with Inter fans that they have largely forgotten Romelu Lukaku, the key man behind last season's league triumph.
The Bundesliga leader travels to Salzburg on Wednesday for its Champions League last 16 first leg.
Bayern Munich chief executive Oliver Kahn has ordered his players to show a reaction in the Champions League after the chastening 4-2 Bundesliga loss at Bochum at the weekend.
"I'm assuming that the players know that a first half like the one in Bochum is unacceptable. We were far below our capabilities," he told reporters on Monday.
"Sometimes it is good that you can play a few days later now in Salzburg and quickly forget such a result," the former Bayern goalkeeper added.
He recalled that the team had already bounced back well from a heavy German Cup loss to Borussia Monchengladbach in October.
"We showed the right reaction after the 5-0 defeat to Gladbach and won the next game clearly. And I assume that it will be the same now," he said.
Kahn does not believe Bayern has a mentality problem but acknowledged Julian Nagelsmann's defense needs work.
"When you lose big, people are always too quick to bring up the subject of mentality," Kahn said.
"However, I believe that defensively, not only this season but in recent seasons, we are missing a few things in our movement and in our work against the ball. We concede too many goals.
"That's where we have to start. We have to work with more discipline and more passion against the ball. Otherwise, mistakes – and even more so in Europe – will be punished mercilessly."
