As Chelsea aim to see Naples and stay alive in the Champions League, club historian Rick Glanvill and club statistician Paul Dutton get back into the eurozone following the winter interval.

Fans fumble around in sock drawers for passports. Stadiums are dressed in unfamiliar livery. And Handel's defrocked 'Zadok The Priest' plays before kick-off. The Champions League is back.

For Chelsea, that represents distraction and opportunity. Sixteen years have passed since the draw for the quarter-finals of Europe's elite competition was made without an English name in Uefa's goldfish bowls.

With Manchester already removed and Arsenal on the wrong end of a 4-0 hammering in Italy last week, west London's finest will be required to fly the flag of St George in San Paolo tonight.

Having passed four games without a win, temporarily evicted from the places for next season's tournament, and having failed to impress against lower league opposition in the FA Cup, the Blues need to find a way back to form by bridging the Gulf of Naples.

How much has changed in the two and a half months since the Blues qualified for the Round of 16? Winter has brought just five wins in 14 matches since that period of optimism.

The group stage had ended with a now vastly underrated 3-0 win over Valencia - the third-best side in Spain behind Real and Barcelona.

Having confirmed leadership of Group E, Andre Villas-Boas's men immediately overcame a previously rampant Manchester City 2-1 in the Barclays Premier League. City had been dismissed from the Champions League by tonight's opponents Napoli with a draw at Eastlands and a 1-2 defeat in southern Italy.
Yet City have since expanded the gap to the top of the Premier League from seven points to 17, even though they play out their Uefa season in the Europa League.

Generally with the first of two legs the home side is as keen to keep a clean sheet as the away team is to steal an away goal. Since Napoli set such a counterattacking trap for opponents, the more seasoned Chelsea might settle for a 0-0 that tempts the Neapolitans out to play on a Stamford Bridge pitch two metres shorter and one narrower than Stadio San Paolo.

It may still require something special if the Londoners are to redress the balance of Italian/English clubs in this competition.

The Italians hold the upper hand in previous encounters. No league has produced more European Cup/Champions League finalists than Serie A's 26, and this year Napoli are joined at this stage of the competition by Juventus and Milan - more than any other country.

This is, however, Napoli's first campaign in Europe's elite title race since the days of Diego Maradona. Between 1984 and 1991 80,000 azzurri regularly packed the stands to watch the inordinately skilled Argentinean win domestic and European league titles.

Twenty-one years later there were hopes the 'ma-gi-ca' days of Maradona, Giordano and Careca might be revisited with a Scudetto success, but the Neapolitans failed to push on this time last year when they were top of Serie A, and stumbled again this winter.

In broader football terms the club is hardly a force, but in how it dominates the city of Naples and the lives of its inhabitants it is a giant. Despite the recession they still regularly attract a sell-out 47,000. Most of their rival clubs' gates are down.

- Match preview by chelseafc.com