Liverpool face FC Barcelona in the second of the first leg of the Champions League semifinals. Unlike last night's game (Tottenham Hotspur 0-1 Ajax), which pitted two relative newcomers together – one side who focused all their attention and ground themselves through this tournament and another who have blazed a trail across it – tonight's fixture is an evenly matched clash of titans.

In the previous round, both teams racked up huge wins: Liverpool thrashed Porto 6-1 across two legs, Barcelona toyed with and then went in for the kill against Manchester United with to earn their 4-0 aggregate victory. And both are dominant domestically too. Liverpool are on the verge of being one of the unluckiest teams in history because, as it stands, they are likely to come second in the Premier League with a whopping 97 points while Barcelona are capitalizing on the Real Madrid crumble, have already won La Liga and are now in the hunt for a treble, a major part of which is prising the Champions League trophy away from its seemingly permanent home in Madrid and bringing it to Catalonia.

Though we are still hours away from the fixture, the game is being played and replayed in the minds of fans and pundits worldwide and the most tantalizing prediction is wondering what will happen between Barca's danger man Lionel Messi and Liverpool's PFA Player of the Year Virgil Van Dijk. Though the Spanish side is blessed to have two ex-Liverpool hitmen in the form of Luis Suarez and Philippe Coutinho, Messi is the most creative and most threatening player Barcelona has and Van Dijk, a veritable brick wall in Liverpool's back four alongside Dejan Lovren, is going to spend the game doing everything he can to shut him down.

If Van Dijk can do that, it's difficult to say what Barcelona will do next. It's a cliche at this point to state but Messi truly is a double edged sword for his team and, under Ernesto Valverde, that's been increasingly obvious. Just as Disney's screenplay for "Aladdin" had sections left blank with the idea that Robin Williams would simply ad-lib something hilarious, it's come to feel as if Valverde's whiteboard, instead of having tactics and formations scribbled all over it has “Messi will know what to do” written on it (in Spanish, of course). Barca's recent run of form, which includes a 4-4 draw with Villareal and a 0-0 with Huesca among an array of slim 1- or 2-0 wins, speaks more to their dominant place in La Liga rather than their quality as a team, and this can easily be exploited.

On the other hand, Jurgen Klopp has made Liverpool into a fearsome unit; Mo Salah was once their primary striker – deemed a “talisman” by everyone, including myself, during last year's season – now he's an integral part of a goalscoring squad that also includes Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino and Georginio Wijnaldum. This versatility is crucial, especially when playing away from Anfield on a European night, and in a ground as fearsome as the Camp Nou, they will need every advantage they can get.