Di Matteo meets Chelsea

British journalists swamped Schalke coach Roberto Di Matteo with questions at the traditional pre-game press conference on Monday. At times it even sounded like the game between Chelsea and Schalke was a secondary issue.

"What sort of links do you still have to the Chelsea stars that you won the Champions League with, back in 2012?," asked one journalist.

"What have you been doing all this time since Chelsea sacked you and why would you come to the Bundesliga?," quipped another scribe.

And then the best to finish: "Would a win against Chelsea be like getting a 'pound of flesh' after your sacking there?" asked one journalist, getting straight to the point.

Next question?

The multi-lingual, well-educated Di Matteo fended the questions off with aplomb however, never letting himself be sucked in by the jibes.

"Yes, I still am in contact with a lot of staff and players at Chelsea, of course. It was a great time in my life," he said. "But, that's really my private life, it's not part of my professional sphere.

"Now we're going to focus on this game, and just concentrate on the job at hand," he added.

When asked whether his sacking at Chelsea, just months after he lead the team to the 2012 Champions League title was fair, he responded diplomatically, "I'm a forward-looking person, not a backwards-looking person."

"You can read into that what you want," he said with a small, wry smile.

Beyond the hype

But when the hype finally dies down on Tuesday night and the opening whistle sounds, Di Matteo knows that his team will have to be at their best if they are to take three points off Chelsea.

"We know we've got to play a great game, and we have to hope Chelsea have an off day," the Swiss coach said, before acknowledging Chelsea's top form at the moment.

"Look, we won on the weekend, we are at home and the players are confident: that's a lot of good aspects for us. But we know that Chelsea are unbeaten in this campaign so far."

The first leg between these two teams ended in a 1-1 draw in London. It was a fighting performance from the German team, which was struggling at the time under their previous coach Jens Keller.

Since then, Schalke has slowly been moving up the Bundesliga table, with Di Matteo's defensive discipline a feature of the team's play. It seems that now is as good a time as ever for Schalke to grab an upset against the Premier League leaders.

Dzeko to miss Bayern game

Elsewhere on Tuesday night, current Premier League champions Manchester City will host Bundesliga champs Bayern Munich in what appears to be the last chance for City to salvage anything from this year's Champions League campaign.

For the Premier League side, Yaya Toure and Fernandinho are both suspended and the Citizens will also likely be missing Edin Dzeko through injury.

City defender Martin Demichaelis, who played for eight years at Bayern, told Manchester City's website ahead of the game, that his team "must" beat Bayern on Tuesday at home.

"I'm sure that every player will give his best to try to win the game," the Argentinian defender told the website. "We went to the Allianz (Arena) a year ago with a number of players missing and won 3-2 so we are more than capable of beating them again."

But, that match was a dead rubber last season. Back in September of this year, Bayern only narrowly beat the Sky Blues 1-0 in the first leg, and with the Bavarian giants already qualified for the next round, a sneaky City win could be on the cards.

On Wednesday, two other German teams will continue their Champions League campaigns as well: Bayer Leverkusen will host Monaco, while Dortmund play Arsenal in London. Last season's Champions League winners Real Madrid will journey to Basel on Wednesday too for what is expected to be an easy game for the Spaniards.

DW will have live blog coverage of all Championship League games with German involvement on www.dw.de/sports, starting at 19:30 UTC on Tuesday November 25.