FC Bayern traveled to Leverkusen with a three-goal lead. Will the team’s path to the quarterfinals falter again?
So far, FC Bayern has taken a three-goal lead into the second leg of a European competition tie 27 times and has reached the next round in every case. In fact, it has only happened four times in the history of the Champions League that a team has managed to come back from such a deficit (you may remember Liverpool 2019).
So if Munich want to avoid an historic debacle, they will need the same sharpness and hunger on Tuesday night in Leverkusen as they did in the first leg six days ago, when Harry Kane, Jamal Musiala and rather inept Bayer professionals had ensured a supposedly comfortable 3-0 lead.
So is there a danger of Bayern resting on their laurels? Not at all, assures coach Vincent Kompany: “I think that if you’re the coach of Bayern, it’s sometimes a bit easier mentally.” Because at FC Bayern, after all, you always have to win, regardless of the lead. “In the end, we want to get the result that takes us through to the next round, but our main priority remains to win every game.”
Of course, it helps that Florian Wirtz, the best player on the opposing team, is unavailable. “That’s a shame, of course,” says Kompany, “we wish him a speedy recovery.” He knows the feeling at least a little, as the Belgian has also had to do without Kane, Musiala or, most recently, Joshua Kimmich from time to time during the season.
“He remains a difference-maker,” Kompany says of Wirtz. ‘You can’t replace them one-on-one, the collective has to pick up the slack, or you need a different idea. But that shouldn’t affect our preparation too much, there are still so many other good players. We have to play our best again to win the game.’
In any case, the Bayern coach does not want to focus too much on the opponent, as he did a little over three weeks ago, when a strong Bayer team had pushed Munich deep into their own half. “If a team deserves to have us sit deep and defend, then we’ll do it,” Kompany repeated the sentence he had already said before the first leg. “We had to do that in the game. But from the start, the goal is always to do what brought us here with our best performance. It’s the same tomorrow. A lot always happens in these games. A few things will happen, we can expect that.”
For the young coach, it would be the first big statement in his eight-and-a-half months in Munich. In the Bundesliga, the 2-3 loss to Bochum can be dismissed as an outlier due to Leverkusen’s loss to Bremen, but Bayern are still on course for the title. And in the Champions League, they would face solvable tasks if they advanced to the semi-finals with Inter Milan or Feyenoord.
