FC Barcelona vs Newcastle United<\/p>\n
Competition\/Round: 2025-26 UEFA Champions League, Round of 16, 2nd Leg<\/p>\n
First Leg Result: Newcastle 1-1 Barcelona<\/p>\n
Barcelona Outs & Doubts: Alejandro Balde, Andreas Christensen, Frenkie de Jong, Jules Kounde (out)<\/p>\n
Newcastle Outs & Doubts: Fabian Sch\u00e4r, Emil Krafth, Bruno Guimar\u00e3es, Lewis Miley (out)<\/p>\n
Barcelona Form Guide: WWWDW<\/p>\n
Newcastle Form Guide: LWLDW<\/p>\n
Misses next match if booked: Lamine Yamal, Ferm\u00edn L\u00f3pez, Marc Casad\u00f3, Gerard Mart\u00edn (Barcelona), Joelinton, Sandro Tonali, Joe Willock, Dan Burn (Newcastle)<\/p>\n
Date\/Time: Wednesday, March 18, 2026, 6.45pm CET\/WAT (Barcelona & Nigeria), 5.45pm GMT (UK), 1.45pm ET, 10.45am PT (USA), 11.15pm IST (India)<\/p>\n
Venue: Camp Nou, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain<\/p>\n
Referee: Fran\u00e7ois Letexier (FRA)<\/p>\n
VAR: Bram Van Driessche (BEL)<\/p>\n
How to watch on TV: TUDN (USA), TNT Sports 2 (UK), SuperSport (Nigeria), Movistar (Spain), others<\/a><\/p>\n How to watch online: Paramount+<\/a> (USA), discovery+ (UK), Sony LIV (India), Movistar+ (Spain), others<\/a><\/p>\n Following an excellent win over Sevilla to maintain their healthy advantage at the top of the La Liga table at the weekend, Barcelona return to European action looking to book a spot in the Champions League quarter-finals when the Blaugrana welcome Newcastle United to the Greatest Stadium on Earth for their Round of 16 second leg on Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n Bar\u00e7a come into this one needing a simple one-goal win to advance to the next round after rescuing a dramatic draw with the last kick of the game last week in a game the Catalans did not deserve to win or even draw, but knockout football is about margins and individual moments of brilliance, and a great play by Dani Olmo to earn a penalty and Lamine Yamal\u2019s composure from the spot gave Bar\u00e7a a much more achievable task in the second leg.<\/p>\n The overall performance, especially from an attacking standpoint, was not very encouraging and needs to improve a ton if Bar\u00e7a want to finish the job at home. Newcastle weren\u2019t exactly brilliant on the night and Bar\u00e7a\u2019s defense was pretty solid, but the home team still created enough to win the game on any other night. Eddie Howe\u2019s side don\u2019t need to take too many risks and have a crazy amount of pace in attacking areas, so it\u2019s safe to assume they\u2019ll be more than happy to sit back, absorb pressure, and try to wreak havoc on the counter.<\/p>\n If Newcastle do adopt a more cautious approach, Bar\u00e7a\u2019s offensive output will need to be much, much better than we saw in the first leg. The midfield needs to be more dynamic, the attackers need to be more productive and decisive, and the team as a whole must play with better pace, more energy, and show a lot more creativity in dangerous areas. The Blaugrana must also carry over the defensive success we saw when it came to limiting Newcastle\u2019s aerial threat. Set pieces often change knockout matches, and Bar\u00e7a cannot allow a silly goal from a corner and\/or free-kick situation.<\/p>\n Bar\u00e7a will also look to rely on their sensational home record this season: the Catalans have won all 12 of their games since returning to Camp Nou in all competitions, and pretty much all 12 wins were either comfortable or very impressive in their nature. This is the first European knockout match at Bar\u00e7a\u2019s iconic home in 37 months, and the 62,000 fans at the stadium must bring their absolute best for the biggest match at Camp Nou yet since the return.<\/p>\n This will be a whole lot of fun. Champions League knockout football is back at Camp Nou, and we can make it memorable.<\/p>\n Barcelona (4-2-3-1): Joan; Eric, Cubars\u00ed, Mart\u00edn, Cancelo; Bernal, Pedri; Yamal, Olmo, Raphinha; Lewandowski<\/p>\n Newcastle (4-3-3): Ramsdale; Trippier, Thiaw, Burn, Hall; Ramsey, Tonali, Joelinton; Elanga, Gordon, Barnes<\/p>\n Newcastle have a lot of counter-attacking and set piece threats that can make this incredibly tough and even heartbreaking for Bar\u00e7a, but I\u2019m still trusting Hansi Flick\u2019s troops to rise to the occasion and move on to the quarters: 3-1 to the home team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FC Barcelona vs Newcastle United Competition\/Round: 2025-26 UEFA Champions League, Round of 16, 2nd Leg First Leg Result:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[134561,59366,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-544279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-barcelona-match-previews","tag-barcelona-uefa-champions-league","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}