Every season, after Christmas for big European clubs, it was a familiar schedule of game after game piling up one after the other, and this season was no different.
FC Barcelona and Real Madrid had survived the first leg fire of the Copa del Rey semifinals.
After the semifinals, their next fixture was a league game but before that, the world of football focused on a ritual that football fans around the world anticipate at this point of the season… the UEFA Champions League knockout draw.
The league had been a sprint, and February's chill reminded players that the hardest months of the season were still to come.
La Liga's final matchday before the Champions League knockouts felt less like a routine weekend and more like a pause before the plunge of champions, the plunge where giants are killed and where underdogs write their stories.
The knockout stages of the UEFA Champions League was the true UEFA Champions League.
