Clash of the titans could make or break Pellegrini and Enrique

Manchester City are well behind Chelsea in the Premier League and out of both domestic cups. If they stumble at this stage it will mark the fourth straight year they've exited the Champions League before the quarterfinals. Pellegrini, of course, will only have been responsible for the last two years, but there will still be scrutiny over his forward progress.

City are a team built to win in the here and now: Martin Demichelis, Vincent Kompany, Aleksandar Kolarov, Pablo Zabaleta, Bacary Sagna, Gael Clichy, Fernandinho, Jesus Navas, David Silva, Yaya Toure, Edin Dzeko, James Milner... all these guys are 28 or older. Indeed, apart from reserve striker Jose Pozo - who is 18 and has played 137 minutes of first-team football - and Eliaquim Mangala - who is 24 - nobody under the age of 25 has even featured for City in the Premier League this season.

Pellegrini has plenty of mitigating factors of course, but the side are also subject to Financial Fair Play restrictions as a result of their settlement less spring. You wonder if an early knockout stage exit coupled with a limp across the finish line even in second place might not prompt a re-think upstairs at the Eithad.

Over at Barcelona, Luis Enrique's position is more complicated. The side have won 11 in a row going into this weekend and they're in the Copa del Rey final. They're the form side, one point behind Real

Madrid as of Friday and with the Clasico coming up on March 22 at the

Camp Nou. Theoretically they could yet win the Treble.

Except an exit now risks sending Barca into a tailspin. The same issues that dogged the club at the beginning of January - Lionel Messi dropped and then suddenly developing a stomach ache that kept him out of training, Director of Football Andoni Zubizarreta resigning, rumors of a rift between Messi and Luis Enrique - haven't gone away, they're just on hiatus. Particularly since the president, Josep Bartomeu, remains hugely unpopular among some sectors of support and there's an election coming up in the summer.

New presidents tend to bring new managers. Between now and then, Luis Enrique doesn't just need to get his team to produce on the pitch (and an early Champions League exit won't help that) he needs to

ensure he has the full backing of Messi. The only way he becomes bullet proof is if he wins La Liga and goes very deep into the Champions League.

IT'S the image. An evocative tableau that draws together a whole range of themes.

A working stiff, just wanting to get home after a long day with his shoulder to the wheel. Young males - privileged, because those who are not can't usually afford midweek Champions League breaks in Paris

- rallying together as a tribe, even as it degenerates into a mob.

White people not allowing a black person on to public transportation, just a with Rosa Parks in Birmingham Alabama more than half a century earlier.

And then there's that song, to the tune of Little Peggy March's chart- topper way back in 1963, leaving no doubt as to what happened. We're racist. And that's the way we like it.

Had the whole scene been staged by Spike Lee, it would not have been more powerful and gut-wrenching. Someone was there to capture it on video - the risk any public miscreant runs in the modern age - and within hours it was on all media, both social and mainstream.

There's still a lot of stuff we don't know and it's likely more facts will emerge.

The only video we've seen is the viral one shot by the ex-pat Brit on his phone. Presumably, there's CCTV on the train platform. There's also the issue of whether law enforcement - whether plainclothes or uniformed - was present. Logic - and the fact that there was serious trouble between Paris St Germain and Chelsea last year - would suggest there was some police around.

Your takeaway from this can have two forms. You can either look at this and ask yourself how many other incidents of this nature go unreported simply because there is nobody there to record it.

Or you can draw comfort from the universal condemnation. And the fact that with cameras everywhere, folks who choose to behave in this way are increasingly unlikely to get away with it.

JUVENTUS and Borussia Dortmund meet Tuesday night and their seasons could be photo negatives of each other. The bianconeri have once again dominated Serie A. Their signings have contributed, they've generally managed to stay healthy and they navigated the switch to a new coach - from Antonio Conte to Max Allegri - without too much fuss. On the flip-side, they labored to qualify for the knockout stage of the Champions League in a group which - Atletico Madrid aside - should have been close to a walk-over.

Borussia Dortmund's woes are well-documented. They spent a good

chunk of the season in or near the relegation zone, though three wins on the bo unce have given them some breathig room. They've been pummeled by injuries and the bulk of their summer signings - a group which includes Adrian Ramos, Ciro Immobile and Shinji Kagawa - have

been either inconsistent or underwhelming. And yet they romped

through their first four games in the group stage, only letting up once it was obvious that they were through.

There's an easy narrative here. Juventus - last year's Europa League semifinal run notwithstanding - have underperformed in Europe, even as they ran away with Serie A. Dortmund, on the other hand, have become victims of their own style of play (among other things), capable of raising their game in one-off ties but dropping too many points against lesser opponents in the Bundesliga's weekly grind.

The paradox here is that getting knocked out by Juventus might actually help Dortmund climb back up the Bundesliga and ensure they

can return to the Champions League next year. On the other hand,

defeat at this stage for Allegri's crew would be another bitter body blow, and leave them with little joy other than the prospect of a domestic Double (they're in the semifinal of the Coppa Italia) which likely would feel rather hollow.