Bayern Munich will travel to the Etihad Stadium to face Manchester City in a highly anticipated Champions League quarter-final match. The Citizens are only five games away from winning UEFA’s premier competition, but they will have to overcome Thomas Tuchel’s Bayern Munich to progress.
Tuchel and Guardiola have had some epic battles in cup competitions, with the current Bayern boss yet to lose to Guardiola in normal time or even concede a goal. He also dealt the Spaniard some Champions League heartache when Chelsea beat Manchester City 1-0 in the 2020/21 final.
However, Manchester City are in top form, having won their last eight games in all competitions, scoring an incredible 31 goals in that time. Erling Haaland, Jack Grealish, and Kevin De Bruyne all appear to have hit form at the right time and look unstoppable. Haaland has scored five goals in seven games against Bayern but has never beaten them, while the Bundesliga giants have won three of the last four away games in England.
The monumental Champions League quarter-final first leg takes place on Tuesday, April 11, and talkSPORT will have live coverage from the blue half of Manchester. Adrian Durham will serve as your presenter, with commentary from Sam Matterface and former Manchester City manager Stuart Pearce. talkSPORT.com will also have a live blog providing regular updates.
Haaland returned from a groin injury on Saturday against Southampton and managed 69 minutes, so he should be fine to start here. Phil Foden, though, is likely to miss out as he is still recovering from having his appendix removed.
Bayern have a few more injury concerns and will be without Manuel Neuer and Lucas Hernandez, who are both out for the remainder of the season. Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting is set to miss out with a knee injury, meaning Tuchel won’t have a natural striker at his disposal. But Leon Goretzka should start after being rested in the 1-0 win over Freiburg at the weekend.
Guardiola spoke highly of Tuchel, saying that he is one of the best managers for sure and has done really well everywhere. He congratulated him after the Champions League final and said that it happens. You lose games and you win games, you lose games, we lost it. We are here again, we try it again.
This will be the seventh meeting between Manchester City and Bayern Munich in European competition, with each side alternating victories across the previous six (three each) – all in the Champions League. Manchester City have won two of the previous occasions when hosting Bayern Munich in the Champions League (L1), with their one defeat coming against Pep Guardiola’s Bayern in October 2013 (1-3).
Since losing four consecutive away games against English sides in the UEFA Champions League between 2005 and 2011, Bayern Munich have only lost on two of their 10 such trips since (W6 D2), and won three of the last four (D1). Manchester City have won their last 10 home games against German sides in the Champions League by an aggregate score of 39-10, including all four games in this run during the knockout stages.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has won 54 per cent of his games in the knockout stages of the Champions League (39/72). Among those with 30+ games in the KO stages (including finals), he has the best win percentage of any manager and is the only one to have won more than half of his games.
This will be the fourth meeting between Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola and Bayern Munich’s Thomas Tuchel in a cup competition, with Tuchel winning two of the previous three. Across the three matches, Guardiola’s sides have failed to score a single goal, with his one triumph coming via a penalty shootout in the DFB-Pokal final in 2016.
Erling Haaland has scored 10 goals in six appearances for Manchester City in the Champions League – the joint-fewest games needed for a player to reach double figures in the competition for a specific club, along with Sébastien Haller for Ajax (6). Indeed, these are the only two instances quicker than Haaland reaching 10 goals in seven Champions League games for previous club Borussia Dortmund.
Leon Goretzka has been directly involved in more goals than any other Bayern Munich player in the UEFA Champions League this season (6 – two goals and four assists). Indeed, 50% of Goretzka’s combined goals and assists in the competition in his career have been registered this season (6/12), in what is his seventh Champions League campaign.
Manchester City’s Erling Haaland has scored five goals in seven career appearances against Bayern Munich (all for Borussia Dortmund), yet has ended on the losing side in all seven matches. Since joining Borussia Dortmund in December 2019, they are the only club side that Haaland has faced on more than two occasions in his club career without winning.
Thomas Müller has ended on the winning side on 99 of his 140 appearances in the Champions League. Should he feature in a victory for Bayern Munich here, he’d be the third player with 100 wins in the competition along with Cristiano Ronaldo (115) and Iker Casillas (101), and the first to do so with a single club.