Barcelona are unbeaten in their last 15 matches across all competitions, which includes a thrilling 5-4 victory on the road against Benfica on Jan. 21. Barcelona enters Wednesday’s match having scored eight goals over their last two games and they’ve kept a clean sheet in five of their past seven fixtures overall. Hansi Flick’s men will take on a Benfica side capable of causing frustration, but I think the Spanish giants have too much quality for the home side to contend with. Look for Barcelona to make a statement with a win over Benfica in the first leg.

Bruno Lage raging at his Benfica team in the rain after blowing a 4-2 lead is a vision Barca's 5-4 win at Lisboa on January 21 is hard to dismiss. Here's a rematch but suspect Benfica, life-and-death with Monaco to reach this round, looks hard-pressed. Barca has been on fire, unbeaten since the calendar turned to 2025, and was never sharper than in the Sunday battering of Real Sociedad, which was already helpless before it got down to ten men as Hansi Flick's side fired 33 shots...to zero for La Real. Barcelona is scoring goals for fun lately (ten in the past three games in all competitions), with Robert Lewandowski scoring in five of his last six appearances. Play Barca on Money Line

This is one of those rare UCL fixtures where we have very recent history to look at how they match up. These two teams met during the group stage in what became the second highest scoring match in the competitions this season. The 4-5 bout in the group stage saw Barcelona claim victory but shined a light on glaring weaknesses on both teams defenses. While I don't know if we'll see nine goals again, I'm expecting goals from both sides, and the over to clear, with strikers like Robert Lewandowski and Vangelis Pavlidis being too in form to stop right now.