Hansi Flick's side have been the top scorers in the competition by a distance, with five of their 28 goals in the league stage coming at the Portuguese giant's Stadium of Light.
That game, a nine-goal thriller ending 5-4 to Barca, was wonderful for the neutral to watch, less so for the managers of both sides with Flick being the happier at the end of the game thanks to Raphinha's breakaway winner in injury-time.
It was the Brazilian's strike in the first leg (1-0) of the Round of 16 tie which now separates the two teams before play gets underway at the Estadio Lluis Companys at 18.45 CET, and the Catalan giants will no doubt be looking for him to be the difference maker once again.
Benfica will be up against it too because Barcelona are unbeaten in their last eight games in the Champions League (W7 D1), which is the longest current run in the competition, and they've only lost one of their last 10 games against Benfica in Europe (W5 D4).
Benfica also haven’t won any of their four away games against Barcelona in European competition (D2 L2), failing to score a goal in each of the last three.
Despite the odds seeming to be stacked against the visitors, there are reasons to be cheerful for those supporters making the journey to Barcelona in the hope of seeing their side earn a place in the quarter-finals against either Borussia Dortmund or Lille.
For a start, although Benfica have lost twice to the Blaugranes in the competition this season, they've never previously been beaten three times by the same opponent in the same European campaign.
The visitors are also likely to find that they'll get chances if Bruno Lage gets his wide men to play further up the pitch. Doing that will peg back Barca's full-backs, Jules Kounde and Alejandro Balde, and limit their influence on the game.
With so much reliance on their ability to get forward and help Flick's expected front three of Raphinha, Lamine Yamal and Robert Lewandowski, being able to take the full-backs out of the game to some degree means Barca will have to consistently go inside and as we can see below, that's not necessarily an area where they like to build their attacks from.
Bringing the focus of the game to the more congested central areas isn't going to suit Barca, particularly if Benfica are ready to stand toe-to-toe and ensure a battle royale type scenario which will put the hosts on the back foot and invariably bring more pressure on central defence.
That means the loss of Barca centre-back, Pau Cubarsi, for this match can't be understated. The 18-year-old has been a stellar performer since breaking into the first-team last season, and were it not for the emergence of Lamine Yamal, the defender is likely to be the one grabbing the headlines for his standard of performance.
There is a calmness to his game which belies Cubarsi's tender years, and his 94.1% pass accuracy is up there with the best in the Champions League this season.
Rock solid alongside Inigo Martinez, Cubarsi has won three of only four tackles he's made in the competition so far - evidencing the dominance of Barca's front men in games - whilst 16 clearances and seven interceptions is a more than decent return from the youngster, who only gets better in all aspects if we add his domestic numbers to the tallies too.
Ronald Araujo is likely to step into the breach in his absence, however, it's worth pondering on why Flick has kept the Uruguayan on the bench for the most part since his injury.
In that 5-4 game, Araujo's timing was out of sync with the rest of the back line on multiple occasions, allowing Benfica to break the offside trap at will. He was also at fault for an own goal in the match, which made the scoreline 4-2 with just over 20 minutes to play - on any other day that may have sounded the death knell for his side.
With Barca playing such a high line under Flick, often as high up as halfway and sometimes even into the opposition's half, that means the likes of Vangelis Pavlidis and Kerem Akturkoglu will again have the freedom of the pitch in which to do some damage if they can time their runs to perfection.
Pavlidis in particular is on fire in this season's competition scoring seven goals, three of which came against Barca in that high-scoring fixture. You have to go all the way back to 1964/65 for the last time a Benfica player scored more in a single European Cup/Champions League campaign (Eusebio and Jose Torres both scored nine goals).
Whilst Araujo's short passing game is good as can be seen in the below graphic, if he is pressed whilst in possession of the ball, he will invariably kick it long and those passes often don't find their target (see the red arrows).
Bruno Lage might therefore do well to recall Barca's outing against PSG in last season's quarter-final second leg, and use the lessons learned from that game in his pre-match meeting with his squad.
Araujo's passing lanes were cut off brilliantly by Luis Enrique's side, and the instant pressure that was put upon him eventually resulted in his sending off. At that point in the tie, Barca were leading 4-2 but in the end, collapsed to lose 6-4 on aggregate.
Benfica certainly can't be as gung-ho as they have been domestically where goals are flowing freely - at least three in four of their last five Portuguese league games - because Barca will simply pick them off. However, they must be brave and positive in their attacking forays.
In what is a winner-takes-all 90 minutes now, Lage's charges have nothing to lose and everything to gain by knocking out one of the bookies' favourites for the Champions League crown.
