The pride of London have travelled to Germany’s eighth-largest city, on the banks of the Emscher and Ruhr rivers, for the first time. Chelsea sailed into the Round of 16 as group winners, while hosts Dortmund were runners-up to Manchester City.

For the first time in the Champions League, Signal Iduna Park has been filled to its 81,000 capacity twice this season (a joint-club record for the club in this competition), yet the atmosphere could only inspire draws against Seville (1-1) and City (0-0).

Pre-match rituals there include a rendition of Liverpool’s anthem, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone,’ by the legendary ‘yellow wall’. That should not faze the visitors, who have only lost twice at Anfield in the past 13 visits across all competitions and, including last month’s 0-0, not since 2020.

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In-form Borussia are without a win in 10 games against English opponents, eight of them losses. They last beat a Premier League side in Europe in 2016 – Tottenham, at this stage – and three of their past four home defeats in this competition came against teams from England.

This is Chelsea’s first European knockout tie since the epic 3-2 away win at Real Madrid. After foundering for several years in the last 16, the 2021 champions have won home and away in the past two seasons against Atletico and Lille, and have t10 victories in 14 matches on the road since the start of the 2020/21 campaign.

A fifth successive win in the competition would be our best run since November 2010 under Carlo Ancelotti. The second and decisive leg in our last tilt at silverware this season will come at Stamford Bridge in just under three weeks’ time. Both sides will have fulfilled three domestic fixtures before then.

Chelsea team news

Graham Potter has not lost in the Champions League and has steered Chelsea to victory in each of the past four matches in the competition. No English coach has ever won five in succession but an electric first half at the London Stadium should instil confidence in claiming a positive result tonight.

Former Dortmund star Christian Pulisic will miss out though injury along with N’Golo Kante, Edou Mendy and Raheem Sterling. Benoit Badiashile, David Fofana, Noni Madueke could not be added to our UEFA squad, while Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was omitted.

Joao Felix, Enzo Fernandez and Mykhailo Mudryk came into the 25, and Carney Chukwuemeka and Lewis Hall, whose best runs in the team came after the group stage, could be beneficiaries of the squad restriction.

Wesley Fofana, Mateo Kovacic and Denis Zakaria should be close to a recall tonight – each of them, as well as Sterling, scored from their only shot on target in the group stage. In the absence of impressive centre-back Badiashile, Kalidou Koulibaly (ill at the weekend), Trevoh Chalobah or Fofana will partner Thiago Silva, and the wing-back partnership of Reece James and Ben Chilwell (with two sub appearances now under his belt) could start for the first time since helping to take Milan apart in October.

Kovacic, Zakaria, Ruben Loftus-Cheek or Conor Gallagher could line up next to Enzo in midfield. For this first leg Potter may opt for three in the middle to bolster wide areas.

A change of formation would, though, require a different role for influential Joao Felix, who scored and made key interventions against West Ham in the number 10 role. That account-opener for the Blues also featured Enzo’s first assist, with the promise of many more to come as connections become intuitive.

Mudryk, another of the Blues’ three squad additions, was directly involved in five goals in six Shakhtar appearances in this season’s group stage (three goals and two assists). Another player on a mission could be ex-Leverkusen man Kai Havertz: Dortmund are the club against whom he has played most times without scoring.

Scouting the opposition – Dortmund

The big news for the hosts is that joint-leading marksman Youssoufa Moukoko will miss both legs after injuring an ankle in a 2-0 defeat of Werder Bremen at the weekend. The Germany international has not scored since the winter break but is the arrow tip of the Westphalians’ 4-2-3-1 formation when available.

However former West Ham player Sebastien Haller, long absent while undergoing cancer treatment, is easing his way back and may lead the attack. The Ivorian played the second leg of our Europa League semi-final victory over Eintracht Frankfurt in 2019, netting in the shoot-out.

Edin Terzic’s youthful, dynamic side are handily placed in the Bundesliga, second behind Bayern despite not being the tightest defensive unit. Their defence prefer to play out from the back but readily change if pressured into errors. Nico Schlotterbeck or veteran Mats Hummels (the club’s second-highest appearance maker), also initiate attacks with big switches of play.

Among Round of 16 teams only Bayern made more defensive blocks in the group stage, but the number of tackles made by Borussia and their success rate were at the lower end.

They favour an attacking approach, with raiding full-backs and clever inverted wingers such as Karim Adeyemi. Six-footer Julian Ryerson especially likes to rampage down the right.

Former Liverpool man Emre Can is likely to partner Jude Bellingham in midfield. Bellingham, the heart and soul of the side, and jinking former Cobham trainee Jamie Bynoe-Gittens have both been among the goals and assists since the restart.

Man in the middle

Tonight’s referee is Jesus Gil Manzano, whose most recent Chelsea match was our 2-0 win over Lille in last year’s Round of 16 first leg. The VAR is fellow Spaniard Alejandro Hernandez.

Where we left off in the Champions League…

Before the Champions League took its winter leave, Chelsea won Group H with 13 points, three clear of Milan and the seventh highest total among the 32 entrants. Dortmund achieved second place behind Manchester City with nine points and a goal difference of five.

Only three sides took more points on the road than the Blues’ six – Enzo Fernandez’s Benfica (7), Bayern (9) and Paris Saint-Germain (7) – while half a dozen completed a better home campaign than the seven points amassed at Stamford Bridge. Over in Group G, Dortmund claimed five points at Westfalenstadion and four away from home.

The Londoners’ leading marksmen were Raheem Sterling and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang with two, while Jude Bellingham led the way with four for the Black-and-Yellows.

Goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga, who played five of the six group fixtures, managed to save 78.6 per cent of shots on target, while Dortmund’s best performer was Gregor Kobel with 83.3 per cent over three appearances. He and Alexander Meyer each kept one clean sheet, while Kepa managed two, both against Milan.

In terms of momentum back in November, Chelsea were one of only five clubs to win the last four group games in succession. Tonight’s hosts drew each of their last three.

Chelsea-Dortmund – the history

As with group stage opponents Dinamo Zagreb, Chelsea have only ever met Round of 16 rivals Borussia Dortmund in a friendly long ago. Tonight’s rivals played against each other at Randall’s Island, New York, in the middle of the Blues’ lengthy tour of the USA in May 1954. An attack of appendicitis for Bill Robertson forced Ted Drake’s men to borrow a goalkeeper.

The stand-in, English migrant Cyril Hannaby, had previously lined up for regular club Baltimore Rockets against the Blues and conceded seven. Temporarily jumping ship did the Yorkshireman no favours either: the Black-and-Yellows beat the Londoners 6-1.

On German soil

Graham Potter is aiming to become the only English coach besides Bobby Robson to win a Champions League away match in Germany. Chelsea, though, have often required a Ruhr-guard action in the country, with just four wins to show from 12 visits. Dortmund hail from the North Rhine-Westphalia region, a hotbed of football that includes previous Blues opponents Schalke and Bayer Leverkusen.

Three visits to the Gelsenkirchen club Schalke, Dortmund’s derby rivals, have produced three wins without conceding: a 3-0, a club record-equalling 5-0 win and a draw, plus a 2-0 group-stage victory over Turkish side Besiktas played there for security reasons. Leverkusen are one of the three German teams with a 100 per cent record against the visiting Londoners.

Further north and east has proved an unhappy hunting ground with no points taken from visits to Werder Bremen and Hertha Berlin. Moving south-west, Frankfurt in the 2018/19 Europa League semi-final ended in a draw, while Chelsea braved the chill of Stuttgart in February 2004 to claim a 1-0 Round of 16 victory. We also beat Stuttgart in the 1998 Cup Winners’ Cup final on neutral soil, substitute Gianfranco Zola the match-winner.

Our most southerly opponents in Germany have been Bayern and Munich’s second team, TSV 1860 Munich (now on the third tier), where Bobby Tambling’s brace earned a draw in the 1965/66 Inter Cities Fairs Cup.

The Bavarian state capital was, of course, the setting for the most famous night in Chelsea’s history, when Didier Drogba’s shoot-out penalty won us the European Cup in Bayern’s own back yard on 19 May 2012. Our most recent visit to Germany in 2020, though, ended in a 4-1 Round of 16 defeat by Bayern.

Chelsea in Germany

• By club historian Rick Glanvill and club statistician Paul Dutton