A titan of a clash in the Champions League Round of 16 when PSG travel to Dortmund for the first leg of the tie

In the second game of Tuesday night, PSG travel to Dortmund in what looks to be a major clash of the titans between the two giants of the game.

Dortmund come into this game on a strong note as they beat Eintracht Frankfurt on Friday night 4-0. Goals from Lukasz Piszczek, Jadon Sancho, Erling Haaland and Raphael Guerreiro secured the three points for BVB as they stay in the title race in the Bundesliga.

Thomas Tuchel returns to a former club he managed not long ago, but the Paris based side struggled at the weekend. They played Amiens who are 19th in Ligue 1 and what an encounter that game was. Amiens stormed into a 3-0 after 40 minutes. PSG the brough the game back in their favour, after 74 minutes they were 4-3 with Serhou Guirassy rescuing a point for Amiens scoring the equaliser in the 91st minute.

Team news

Borussia Dortmund will be without Marco Reus and Thomas Delaney through injury for the visit of PSG on Tuesday, while an ankle problem has also ruled out Julian Brandt.

Neymar is expected to overcome a rib injury to start for PSG and has been included in the 21-man squad travelling to Germany.

Presnel Kimpembe is a doubt with a thigh problem while Colin Dagba and Abdou Diallo are both unavailable due to injury.

All the signs point towards a goal fest, but it seems that BVB head coach Lucien Favre may have other ideas.

”I love watching a beautiful game of football, but despite that, sometimes I’m all for winning 1-0. High-scoring matches leave the fans happy, but not necessarily the coaches.

“They pose a huge threat going forward. They are absolute masters of certain elements of the game. As soon as you lose the ball, they will hit you at lightning speed.

”At the end of the day, it all comes down to us.”

PSG manager Thomas Tuchel spoke to the media about the big match ahead and on the task of getting a good result away from home.

“Being confident will be absolutely vital, if we aren’t, we won’t survive in this stadium, in front of these fans. We can be confident because we have picked up good results in all competitions.

“We attack and we defend together. The spirit of the team will be important. We will need to be able to adapt to various situations.

“For me, that’s the key. Dortmund have quality, are very good with their counter-press and have impressive stats. We will need to be intelligent. That will be our challenge.”

Head-to-head

The only previous encounter between Borussia Dortmund and PSG was in the 2010/11 Europa League group stages – both games ended in a draw (1-1 in Dortmund, 0-0 in Paris).

Borussia Dortmund have scored at least two goals in their six Champions League home games against French clubs. However, among the 16 teams qualified for this season’s knockout phase, no team scored fewer goals in the group stages (eight).

Borussia Dortmund have made it past the Champions League round of 16 only once in the last five seasons. It was in 2016-17 under current PSG manager Tuchel, eventually knocked out by Monaco in the quarter-finals. Tuchel has won none of his five away games against Dortmund (D2 L3), all of these taking place when he was in charge of Mainz (2009-2014).

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