Manchester City are set to take on FC Basel in the UEFA Champions League first knockout round 1st leg game on tuesday night, 13 February 2018 at the St. Jakob-Park in Switzerland. The first leg is important for both sides, specially City who will be looking to finish off the tie in first leg while FC Basel who historically created all sorts of problems for English clubs over the years need to take a positive result back to Eithad to stand a chance of qualification. The game will kickoff at around 20:45 CET / 19:45 uk time.
Match Highlights:
Manchester City are playing away from home against FC Basel in a game which kicks off at traditional 7:45 p.m uk time. BT Sports has the live coverage rights in the UK and they will broadcast the match live starting 30 minutes before kickoff at BT Sports 2. This will be the first leg of the tie and second leg will be played couple of weeks later.
Team News & Short Preview: Manchester United qualified for Champions League via winning Europa League and Jose Mourinho has already laid out plan for this year’s Champions League campaign. He wants his team to qualify for knockout stages and from there learn from the experience without any burden or expectations of winning the tournament. Its more of a learning curve as United go through transition. Its evident Mourinho has priorities Premier League title this season and he will stick to his guns just like last year when United put emphasis on winning Europa League rather than going all out for top 4 finish.
Manchester United 2-0 FC Basel – 12 September 2017
[ UEFA Champions League 2017-18 Match ]
35′ 1 – 0 Marouane Fellaini
53′ 2 – 0 Romelu Lukaku
FC Basel are a decent side who were one of the reason’s United knocked out of the group stages back in 2011. On paper this is pretty much given three points for United however Mourinho won’t take Basel lightly considering he has kept De Gea in goal for United. Lukaku and Pogba should both start while players around them are set to exchanges places from the bench.
Manchester United last played FC Basel under Sir Alex Ferguson back in 2011 and they drew 3-3 at Old Trafford and lost 2-1 in Switzerland which ultimately knocked them out of the group stages.
Predictions: Not a hard one to predict this one. Looking at United’s Europa League campaign last year United were formidable at home specially at the back. But they struggled to score goals going forward but with Lukaku, Rashford, Mkhitaryan and Martial in good form I can see them scoring at least a couple of goals and should keep a clean sheet at the back. Im going with a straight forward 2-0 win for United in this one.
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