A touch of romance has returned to the Champions League quarterfinals with seven countries, including Cyprus, represented in this week's first legs with AC Milan-Barcelona topping the bill. Although Wednesday's heavyweight clash at San Siro dominates the ties, the most intriguing clash sees upstarts APOEL Nicosia against nine-time Euroepan champion Real Madrid, in the sort of David-versus-Goliath clash that has become a rarity. The presence of Benfica, twice winner in the early 1960s, has added a dose of nostalgia to the last eight, although its policy of recruiting South American players rather than developing Portuguese talent has provoked criticism. Benfica hosts Chelsea, the Premier League's lone survivors, while Bayern Munich, whose stadium hosts the final in May, is at Olympique Marseille in their first meeting. It is the first time so many countries have been represented in the quarterfinals since 1996-97, the last year in which the competition was restricted to the champions of domestic leagues. Since then, the Champions League has been expanded to include runners-up and then third and even fourth-placed teams from some countries and the quarterfinals have become the preserve of the wealthy few. From 1997-98 until last season, only 11 of UEFA's 53 member associations – Germany, Spain, Ukraine, France, Italy, England, Greece, Portugal, Turkey, Netherlands and Russia –managed to get teams to the last eight. In the 2000-01 season, Spain and England had three teams apiece in the quarterfinals, while two seasons later Spain and Italy had three each and in 2007-08 four of the quarterfinalists were from the English Premier League. UEFA president Michel Platini, however, has been keen to make the competition more democratic and open. His Financial Fair Play program, which comes into effect for the 2013-14 season, aims to force clubs to live within their means and prevent those with rich owners taking a stranglehold. UEFA has also reserved five places in the Champions League group stage for the winners of smaller domestic leagues such as Cyprus. Although most of those, such as Viktoria Plzen, BATE Borisov and Dinamo Zagreb, sank without trace in the group stage, APOEL has managed to keep going. An APOEL victory on Tuesday would be a stunning upset while a win for a weakened AC Milan over Barca in a repeat of the 1994 final, which the Italians won 4-0, would also be a surprise.
