The Champions League quarterfinal matchups this season were very interesting.
Of the eight teams, three were from La Liga—Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Atletico Madrid. The Premier League had Manchester United and Chelsea, the Bundesliga had two as well—Bayern Munich and Dortmund—and the last team was Ligue 1's Paris Saint-Germain.
The Serie A teams had been completely wiped out in the round of sixteen.
There was also another particularly interesting phenomenon in this season's Champions League round of sixteen: every group winner had defeated a group runner-up to claim a place in the quarterfinals.
As early as the quarterfinal draw, many media reporters had begun writing articles analyzing this phenomenon in depth. They believed it was a sign that the balance of power in European Football was changing, especially the complete decline of Serie A.
Of course, some people had also calculated that Serie A had been the league with the lowest investment in the transfer market in recent years.
When you got right down to it, professional football was all about burning money.
Real Madrid's quarterfinal opponent was Dortmund, another German team. Yet at home, Real Madrid demolished Dortmund four-nil, thanks to Yang Yang's Hat-trick and a goal from Isco, leaving everyone stunned.
Ancelotti had once again deployed a 3-5-2 formation in this match while also freeing Isco from his restraints. The media praised him lavishly after the game, because this season Real Madrid had constantly switched among the 3-5-2, 4-3-3, 4-4-2, and even the 4-3-2-1 Christmas Tree formations, and had played very well in all of them.
The main reason was that the team had enough depth on the bench to adapt to different tactical approaches, which gave their opponents a massive headache.
With one foot in the semifinals, Real Madrid's opponent would come from the other upper-bracket clash