FOOTBALL at its very best.

That was Arne Slot’s memory of Liverpool’s richly entertaining meeting with Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League last season.

Liverpool ultimately went out, beaten at Anfield in a round-of-16 penalty shootout by the team that would go on to win the competition for the first time, but Slot loved the way his side played and still maintains it was “the best game I’ve managed in my career.”

Now they meet again almost 12 months on, with Liverpool — and Slot — in a very different place.

Indeed, the Dutch coach appears to be fighting for his job heading into the quarter-final double header with the European champions that starts with the first leg in Paris tomorrow.

A 4-0 loss at Manchester City in the FA Cup on Saturday was Liverpool’s latest poor result of a season that initially began with so much hope after the club’s record summer splurge on new players on the back of cruising to the Premier League title.

With the Reds having long given up hope of retaining their league title, the Champions League is their only remaining chance of a trophy. Based on current form, that looks unlikely.

While Liverpool have lost four of their last seven games in all competitions in a run of results that has piled the pressure on Slot, PSG are on a four-match winning run that contains back-to-back victories over Chelsea in the Champions League’s round of 16 (5-2 and 3-0).

Only one team have retained the Champions League since the turn of the century — Real Madrid won it for three straight years from 2016 — but PSG look in good shape to do so.

Slot and Liverpool might just be happy to get out of the Parc des Princes with a fighting chance of advancing going into the second leg at Anfield.

There are three other quarter-final clashes kicking off this week: Real Madrid v Bayern Munich, Barcelona v Atletico Madrid, and Sporting Lisbon v Arsenal.

Heavyweights meeting early again

It’s one of the more unlikely Champions League facts: Madrid and Munich, winners of the title a combined 21 times, still haven’t met in the final.

They won’t this season, either.

The two European heavyweights are, however, meeting in the knockout stage for the sixth time in the past 14 seasons and it has been a one-sided rivalry so far.

Madrid, the record 15-time champions, have won four of five two-legged match-ups with Bayern since the 2011/12 season: once in the quarter-finals and three times in the semi-finals, most recently in 2024. Bayern won in the semi-finals in 2012 after a penalty shootout.

Bayern might never have a better chance to end that miserable run, given the German champions are unbeaten in 13 games in all competitions. Star striker Harry Kane is expected to be available, despite missing Saturday’s win over Freiburg in the Bundesliga with a minor ankle issue sustained in national team training last week.

Madrid are coming off a comfortable round-of-16 win over Man City but, more recently, a 2-1 loss at Mallorca on Saturday that hurt their Spanish league title hopes.

Barcelona-Atletico again and again and again

The players of Spanish rivals Barcelona and Atletico might be sick of the sight of each other by next week’s second leg.

That’s because their upcoming Champions League double-header will complete a barrage of five meetings between the teams in the space of two months, culminating in three matches in 10 days.

On Saturday, Barcelona came from behind to beat Atletico 2-1 on the road to strengthen their hold on the Spanish league lead. In February, they met in the Copa Del Rey with each winning big at home and Atletico advancing on aggregate.

They have met twice in the Champions League knockout stages and both times at the quarter-final stage, with Atletico going through in 2014 and 2016 on their run to the final each season. Atletico played the second leg at home on those occasions, too.

The first leg of their current head-to-head will kick off tomorrow.

Gyokeres back at Sporting

Fresh from guiding Sweden into the World Cup, Arsenal striker Viktor Gyokeres makes a first return to the club that turned him into a globally renowned striker.

At Sporting, Gyokeres scored 97 goals in 102 games, including 54 last season when he outscored the likes of Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland and Mohamed Salah. Quite the rise, then, for someone who previously had barely played a top-tier league game.

Since joining Arsenal, goals haven’t been so easy to come by — he has 16 in 42 matches in all competitions — but remains first choice under coach Mikel Arteta, who values his line-leading qualities.

And, after his recent heroics for Sweden when he grabbed a hat-trick against Ukraine and then the crucial late goal against Poland in the winner-takes-all play-off, Gyokeres should be full of confidence on his return to Lisbon for this evening’s match.

Sporting will look to make home advantage count like it did in the round of 16, completing a turnaround against Bodo/Glimt by winning the second leg 5-0 for one of the great Champions League comebacks.