Clash of the Titans: FCB vs FCB

The most scintillating, tantalizing and mouth-watering clash of this year’s Champion’s League is here! FC Bayern Munchen vs FC Barcelona. Bavaria vs Catalunya. The first leg takes place on the 23rd of April 08.45pm CET (24th April 12.15 am IST) at the Allianz Arena, Munich with the return leg to be played on the 1st of May 08.45pm CET (2nd May 12.15 am IST) at the Nou Camp, Barcelona. As we are only a week away from the first leg, let’s review the chances of both the teams, their previous meetings as well as the team news from a Bayern Munich fan’s point of view.

Bayern are already the Bundesliga champions of 2013. They comfortably beat Nuremberg 4-0 even with the subs and reserves coming into play. The head coach Jupp Heynckes made nine changes to the team that beat Juventus 2-0. Their next game is against Wolfsburg in the semi-finals of the German Cup on Wednesday 17th April 12am IST, followed by an away match to Hannover in the Bundesliga on Saturday 20th April, before they meet Barca. With the benefit of being the champions, the coach can rest his key players away to Hannover before the very important Barca match.

For Barcelona, things looked a bit dicey when they met bitter rivals PSG at Camp Nou on April 10th. To the disbelief of the home spectators and to the rejoice of the away fans, PSG opened the scoring with Javier Pastore striking the back of the net. Barca looked worried as PSG repeatedly tried to get their second and pressed them, but then on came the little magician as a sub, and poof! PSG were blown away and all their hopes crashed. A few sublime and deft touches from Lionel Messi and Pedro struck home to make it 1-1. The match ended with Barcelona being the last team to reach the semi finals and joined Bayern, Real and BVB. Barca haven’t won La Liga yet, but have a massive advantage of 13 points over second placed Real Madrid with seven league games to go. So the entire squad is supposed to be available to Tito Vilanova and co. for the Bayern game.

Talking of their previous meetings, Barca and Bayern have met three times in Europe – in the Europa League semi finals 1995/96 where Bayern won 4:3 over two legs. They also met in the 1998/99 Champion’s League group stages with Bayern having the edge scoring 3, conceding 1, and winning both the home and away games. Last but not the least, they met in the 2009 Champion’s League quarter finals, where the game at Munich was a 1-1 draw but the return leg at Nou Camp was a nightmare for Bayern as they fell prey to a Messi-merizing display and lost 4-0. All in all, Barca and Bayern have met six times with Bayern winning 3 games, Barca 1, and two stalemates with Bayern scoring nine goals to Barca’s eight.

We have already seen that Barca’s defense can be weak when put under pressure. If Messi is neutralized, Barca could be in real trouble as we have seen in the recent past in matches against Real, as well as in last year’s semi finals against Chelsea. So Bayern have an edge over their opponents with their exceptional attacking potential, and Schweinsteiger and Martinez or Gustavo for holding up Messi. On the other side, Barca have the ever reliable Lionel Messi who can create goals out of thin air.

Let’s look forward to two action packed football matches at the very best level of football.