Enjoying a classic Champions League game with Heineken's #ShareTheSofa experience

The Arsenal vs Bayern Munich Champions League game – a night to remember!

It was time for Match Day 5 of the Round of 16 in the UEFA Champions League that kick-started the second legs of each of the knockout games. And taking centre stage were the champions of Europe, Bayern Munich.

Bayern, 2-0 winners over Arsenal in the first leg at the Emirates Stadium a fortnight ago, were looking to become amongst the first teams to book their place in the quarter-finals of this year’s edition. Pep Guardiola, since taking over from treble-winning manager Jupp Heynckes in the summer, has seemingly made a brilliant Bayern team even better and it was always going to be an uphill task for Arsenal.

Champions League nights are something that every football fan looks forward to as they are extra special and even more so when the matchup involves two heavyweights such as Arsenal and Bayern Munich. But this time, as the usual coterie of friends and football aficionados assembled together for yet another football match, there was a surprise in store to accentuate that experience a notch higher.

Hello #ShareTheSofa from the house of Heineken! Yes, Heineken – one of the world’s largest beer brands which, perhaps along with the country’s footballers, happens to be one of the greatest Dutch exports to the world!

Being one of the key sponsors of the UEFA Champions League, the beverage giants are carrying out a campaign called ‘#ShareTheSofa’ on Champions League nights where a few winners get the chance to enjoy a legendary Champions League viewing experience with Heineken providing various embellishments to enhance the football experience. It a campaign centred around Twitter and is aimed at promoting healthy football banter.

My friends and I were lucky enough to win the contest in Bangalore, so yesterday’s Champions League matches promised to be a lot more fun than usual. Needless to say, it turned out to be a memorable night.

The whole experience is planned all the way through. To start with, you get a comfortable sofa that you can share with three other football crazy fans while you watch the match. To keep you refreshed and in good spirits through the game, you also get 24 pints of brilliantly brewed Heineken beer. Now when you have so much beer, you need a place to keep them right? So you also get three buckets which you can fill up with ice cubes in order to keep your beer nice and chilled and a table to boot, to place these buckets.

Voila! You are all set for a fantastic Champions League night!

The match in itself began slowly, but gradually began to pick up pace with Bayern beginning to assert their dominance. The Arsenal fans in the house knew that it was going to take a miracle to progress from this tie, but they were nevertheless hopeful that their side would not go down meekly. The two best chances of the first half fell to Bayern, but they failed to capitalize. Arsenal in general held a good defensive line, and managed to keep that match goalless going into half-time.

The second half saw Bayern score with Bastian Schweinsteiger making good on an easy finish after good work on the left flank from Franck Ribery. But Arsenal were not going down without a fight as they equalized almost immediately through Lukas Podolski’s powerful finish.

Bayern had more chances to put the game to bed but they were a tad wasteful, while Arsenal refused to buckle down and eventually earned a fighting draw to leave Munich with the aggregate lead.

Arsenal were eliminated for the second year running by the Bavarian giants, but Wenger and his Arsenal side could take plenty of heart from the fact that they put in a very resolute performance at the home of the European champions, inside the Allianz Arena.

Perhaps the highlight of the night was Arjen Robben doing his best at perfecting the art of the swan dive, continually trying to con the referee into giving his team an advantage. Heck, some of the dives were so blatantly obvious that even those in the house who were a few Heinekens down could spot it!

As always there was plenty of banter between the rival sets of fans, that included digs at Arsene Wenger, Arsenal’s nine-year trophy drought and Mesut Ozil. The Gunners’ fans, for their part, retorted with how Bayern have not been able to beat them at home for two years now. But it was all in good fun, in line with Heineken’s tagline of ‘Enjoy Responsibly’.

Any experience is always more enjoyable when you share it with a couple of friends and Heineken helped provide us exactly that. The Arsenal fans in our group went home disappointed, the Bayern fans elated, and the neutrals were just glad to have witnessed a good competitive match. But win or lose, we left with a smile on our faces thanks to Heineken’s #ShareTheSofa campaign.