Chelsea against Paris Saint-Germain is gradually turning into something of a European football classic.

Since 2014 the sides have twice squared off in the Champions League knockout stage, the English outfit succeeding the first time and the French coming off the better from the second, and both ties were incredibly close, with nothing between them in terms of goals scored.

That already sets up a compelling occasion when hostilities are resumed at the Parc des Princes on Tuesday, but what really ups the stakes this time around is the importance of progression for the egos of their respective coaches.

In one corner stands Laurent Blanc.

A serial champion in France, the PSG boss is also someone who continues to lack the European certification needed to be considered one of the best active managers today, not quite rubbing shoulders with the likes of Pep Guardiola and Diego Simeone.

Once upon a time Guus Hiddink stood among them, proving his European Cup quality by winning the tournament in the 1980s, and more recently, by taking Chelsea to a semi-final. Yet the Dutchman is also someone with a reputation that is now in tatters after a disastrous spell in charge of his country.

Will this year’s Champions League see Blanc finally show that he is more than just a flat-track bully, or could it see Hiddink prove that he can still compete with the best? Tuesday night will bring us one step closer to finding out.

Laurent Blanc’s trophy cabinet has filled significantly since he took charge of PSG in 2013. The winner of two league titles and three major cups in the French capital, he is currently on course for a second consecutive domestic treble, with a team that is unbeaten in 35 games, has scored 25 goals since the turn of the year alone, and conceded only five in that period.

On paper, it’s a hell of a record.

Yet scepticism over just how laudable those feats really are remains, principally because PSG’s financial might means they should be on a different level to the rest of their Ligue 1 rivals.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has admitted as much himself, noting in January that when PSG played against a fifth division side in the cup, the game felt like their matches in Ligue 1.

Such an obvious disparity in quality means it is hard to judge the true standard of coaching needed to make PSG tick in France.

That may explain why Blanc’s name is rarely linked with any top jobs these days, something that, paradoxically, seems to occur even less now than when he took FC Bordeaux to a rare league title back in 2009 and was immediately made a shoe-in for the French national team gig.

Domestic imbalance isn’t unique to France of course, but unlike FC Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, who can bat off similar criticisms by pointing critics in the direction of recent Champions League titles, PSG have yet to compete with the continent’s big boys.

In two seasons, Blanc’s team have twice been eliminated at the quarter-final stage in Europe, their most recent a 5-1 hammering from Barcelona.

It is difficult to gauge whether there has been any meaningful progress from Carlo Ancelotti’s sole Champions League season at the club, when the away goals rule was the difference between his team and Barça in the quarter-finals. The only way Blanc can prove beyond doubt that Paris have moved forward is by making a tangible step into the last four or beyond.

Unlike Blanc, there was a time when Guus Hiddink was universally recognised as a top bracket coach.

PSV Eindhoven can thank him for their sole European Cup win, when he coached them past no less than Real Madrid and Benfica to claim the trophy in 1988, and his success endured the changing of generations.

In 2002 he took South Korea to an unfathomable fourth place at the World Cup, then followed that by leading PSV to a Champions League semi-final, 17 years after his original glory years in Eindhoven.

Towards the end of the decade he guided Russia to the semi-finals of Euro 2008, then to cap it off, took only three months to steady a shaky ship at Chelsea, win an FA Cup and get them to the last four in the 2008-09 Champions League. In the summer of 2009, Hiddink’s stock couldn’t have been much higher, just as it was 20 years earlier.

In 2015, things are very different for him however.

The man once known as “Lucky Guus” has endured a series of undeniably poor years that have cast doubts over his ability to coach successfully in the modern game.

The first disappointment arrived only months after he departed Chelsea, when Russia failed to better Slovenia in the 2010 World Cup play-offs, and his next job as Turkey manager ended in a similar style with Croatia beating them comfortably in the play-offs for Euro 2012.

A brief spell at once-rich Anzhi Makhachkala between 2012 and 2013 then ended trophy-less.

The Dutchman’s next move needed to be a good one, and in principle, taking charge of a Netherlands side that had just placed third at the 2014 World Cup would have seemed like a sure bet.

Instead, it turned into a nightmare. Hiddink’s Oranje finished fourth in their Euro 2016 qualifying group behind Turkey, Iceland and the Czech Republic, losing more games than they won in his ten months in charge.

The veteran did such a poor job that he was sacked four months before qualifying ended.

The Guus Hiddink at Chelsea today is a man looking to repair some of the damage done to his stature as a manager, and with the London side undefeated in his 11 games since coming on board in December, there are some tentative signs of life.

There is no more universally accepted indicator of a manager’s quality than European success however, and it is there that Hiddink will try to ensure that he does not bow out of coaching as a beaten man.

Laurent Blanc will fancy sending him into retirement to the benefit of his own reputation, however.

Lee Roden is a Spanish and European football writer. You can follow him on Twitter @LeeRoden89