Barcelona and Real Madrid face the worrying prospect of three Clásico encounters within the space of 11 days this April if the two La Liga teams are drawn against other in the Champions League.
Title defenders Madrid comfortably booked their place in the last eight of the competition after beating Napoli 6-2 on aggregate last week.
For Luis Enrique’s men it was an altogether different story as the Catalans overturned a first-leg four-goal deficit to beat Paris Saint-German 6-5 in one of the greatest comebacks in European football.
But with Barcelona and Madrid now through to the quarter-finals of the Champions League, there’s every chance the two teams could be drawn against one another.
Should this be the case, Real and Madrid will go head-to-head across two legs in mid-April before then facing off against one another in the league on April 23.
With the quarter-finals of the Champions League set to take place on the 11/12th April, this could see the Clásico played out three times across 11 days.
Such a schedule would be particularly concerning for Zinedine Zidane’s men who host city rivals Atletico the weekend before the quarter-finals.
A similar scenario has played out before. In the 2010/11 season, Barcelona and Madrid met in the semi-finals of the Champions League towards the end of April, from which the Catalans emerged triumphant, having previously played each other 11 days before in La Liga.
