Inter meet old rivals Schalke as Rangnick returns

After ousting FC Bayern München in dramatic fashion in the round of 16, UEFA Champions League holders FC Internazionale Milano now face another Bundesliga side, FC Schalke 04, in a rematch of the 1997 UEFA Cup final.

• Schalke emerged victorious then, prevailing 4-1 on penalties at San Siro after each team had won 1-0 at home. This great stadium holds less happy memories for the visitors' new coach, Ralf Rangnick, however, as it was here that his Schalke team suffered UEFA Champions League group stage elimination via a 3-2 defeat by AC Milan in December 2005 – his last game in European competition.

Previous meetings
• The clubs' past encounters have been tight affairs. In the 1997 UEFA Cup final, Huub Stevens' Schalke won the first leg in Gelsenkirchen 1-0 through Marc Wilmots' 69th-minute goal. Iván Zamorano struck the only goal of the return for Roy Hodgson's Inter after 84 minutes.

• The lineups for the second leg in Milan on 21 May 1997 were:
Inter: Pagliuca, Bergomi (Angloma 70), Paganin, Fresi, Pistone, Zanetti (Berti 119), Ince, Sforza (Winter 80), Djorkaeff, Ganz, Zamorano.
Schalke: Lehmann, Látal (Held 111), De Kock, Thon, Linke, Buskens, Eigenrauch, Němec, Müller (Anderbrügge 97), Max, Wilmots.

• Luigi Simoni was in charge of Inter when they took revenge in the quarter-finals the following season. Ronaldo earned the Nerazzurri a 1-0 first-leg win and although Michaël Goossens cancelled this out in the 90th minute of the return, Taribo West's extra-time effort earned the Italian side aggregate victory en route to lifting the trophy.

• Inter's Javier Zanetti played in all four matches and is the only survivor of those contests.

Match background
• Inter are bidding to become the first team to successfully defend the European crown in the UEFA Champions League era. This is their 12th quarter-final appearance and they have won eight of their previous 11.

• Schalke, by contrast, are hoping to make it to their first semi-final after previous defeats at this stage in 1958/59 and 2007/08.

• Inter will look to get back to winning ways at San Siro after going down 1-0 to Bayern in the last round, a defeat they reversed with a 3-2 second-leg victory in Bavaria. They had previously won seven consecutive home games in the UEFA Champions League, including a 4-0 success against Germany's SV Werder Bremen in the group stage.

• Inter's overall home record against German visitors is: W10 D1 L5.

• Since their Matchday 1 loss at Olympique Lyonnais, Schalke have been unbeaten on their travels in this season's competition, winning at SL Benfica in the group stage and drawing at Hapoel Tel-Aviv FC and Valencia CF, their last-16 victims.

• Schalke's most recent visit to Italy came in the 2005/06 UEFA Cup round of 16, when they lost 1-0 at US Città di Palermo before winning the return 3-0.

• Schalke's record in Italy is one win and four defeats – and the former was a 3-0 forfeit victory against ACF Fiorentina in the 1977/78 UEFA Cup first round.

Team ties
• Both clubs have changed their coach during the course of this campaign. Inter's Leonardo replaced Rafael Benítez in December while Rangnick returned to the Schalke helm on 17 March after the departure of Felix Magath. Rangnick's first spell with Schalke ended seven days after the aforementioned 3-2 loss to Milan at San Siro on 6 December 2005.

• During his long stay at the Santiago Bernabéu, Raúl González shared a dressing room with all of Inter's Real Madrid CF old boys – Wesley Sneijder, Esteban Cambiasso, Walter Samuel and even Samuel Eto'o, who made three Liga appearances in the 1998/99 and 1999/2000 campaigns. Raúl and Eto'o later faced off many times in Madrid-FC Barcelona showdowns.

• Raúl appeared for Madrid against Inter in the 1998/99 UEFA Champions League group stage, winning 2-0 at home but losing 3-1 at San Siro. His final goal in the competition for the Merengues was against AC Milan in last term's group stage.

• José Manuel Jurado's season in the Madrid first team coincided with Samuel's stint in the Spanish capital in 2004/05. Jurado later played with Thiago Motta at Club Atlético de Madrid in 2007/08.

• Klaas-Jan Huntelaar spent 2009/10 with Milan. He made his Rossoneri debut as a substitute in a 4-0 defeat by Inter and was a second-half replacement in the second derby of the season, which Inter won 2-0.

• Huntelaar is a Netherlands team-mate of Sneijder and the pair were together at AFC Ajax between January 2006 and summer 2007, along with Angelos Charisteas. Besides Raúl, Sneijder played with Christoph Metzelder at the Bernabéu.

• Yuto Nagatomo and Atsuto Uchida were in the Japan squad that won the AFC Asian Cup in January.

• Lúcio spent eight seasons in Germany with Bayer 04 Leverkusen and Bayern, and was a team-mate of Ali Karimi in Munich from 2005 to 2007.

• Eto'o was in the Barcelona team that defeated Schalke in the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals in 2007/08. He earlier had mixed fortunes against the Gelsenkirchen club with RCD Mallorca in the 2001/02 UEFA Champions League first group stage; after scoring the only goal of the teams' September meeting in Germany, he was sent off 26 minutes into Mallorca's 4-0 home loss in the return the next month.

• Huntelaar scored the winning goal in the Netherlands' 2-1 win against Cameroon in the 2010 FIFA World Cup group stage after Eto'o had equalised for the African side.

• Motta and Andrea Ranocchia lined up against Manuel Neuer in the 1-1 friendly draw between Italy and Germany in Dortmund in February.