Manchester City Vs Bayern Munich Live Football Match Score 11/4/2023

Manchester City Vs Bayern Munich Live Football Match Score 11/4/2023

Make no bones about it, Bayern are the team everyone wanted to avoid in the quarter-final draw. Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, Inter Milan and Viktoria Plzen have all come a cropper against the record German champions in this season’s competition, losing by an aggregate score of 21-2. In case you missed it, Bayern have won all eight of their fixtures so far, keeping clean sheets in seven of them. Only Plzen managed to breach the Red Machine, but were still outscored 4-2 as Bayern wrapped up qualification to the knockouts with two games to spare. Either side of that routine win on Czech soil, heavyweight forwards such as Robert Lewandowski, Lisandro Martinez, Kylian Mbappe and Lionel

Messi all fired blanks in meetings with the perennial Champions League contenders. Sure, upcoming opponents City have Erling Haaland, who scored five times across seven meetings with Bayern as a Borussia Dortmund player – but he lost every single one of them. One way or another, Bayern find a way to make even the very best flop. Getting knocked out of the DFB-Pokal in the quarterfinals at the hands of SC Freiburg wasn’t exactly the boost of confidence Thomas Tuchel and Bayern Munich were looking for ahead of the Champions League quarter-finals against Manchester City. Still, though, the tie between the two sides remains to be the tie of the next round of Europe’s most prestigious competition and the winner between the two is one of the odds-on favorites to press on and make it to the final in Istanbul, Turkey.

Tuchel is no stranger to getting the better of Pep Guardiola in the Champions League, as he lead Chelsea to victory in 2021, beating Manchester City 1-0 in Porto, Portugal by virtue of a Kai Havertz goal. That title didn’t exactly foreshadow what was to come for Tuchel at Chelsea, though, as he was dismissed by the club a little over two years later after a group stage loss to Dinamo Zagreb in the fall. Both City and Bayern breezed through the group stages with flying colors, and in the process, Bayern bested Barcelona twice, which is the club that Robert Lewandowski left for last summer in what was a transfer saga that seemed to be somewhat of a distraction towards the end of last season. Barcelona was also subsequently knocked out of the Europa League at the hands of Manchester United, as they could never really translate their La Liga form to Europe.

Looking ahead to the savory Bayern-City matchup, Lewandowski was asked who he is favoring to advance to the semifinals, and he answered rather diplomatically. “It’s going to be a very interesting game. It will completely depend on the form of the day. A 50-50 game,” he said, perhaps showing respect both to his former club and a team managed by a former manager of his (as per Sport Bild’s Tobi Altschaffl via @iMiaSanMia).
Ironically enough, at different points, Lewandowski was linked with a potential move to Chelsea in the Premier League when Tuchel was manager there, but it became evidently clear the closer it got to the end of last season that Barcelona was the desired destination. Any way you slice up the sub-plots, you’d have to guess Lewandowski is pulling for Bayern, but just responded diplomatically to save a bit of face.

Bayern defended top spot in the Bundesliga in a Super Saturday showdown against top-four hopefuls Freiburg, with Matthijs de Ligt’s sensational piledriver enough to take the spoils in a 1-0 success and keep them two points clear of Borussia Dortmund at the summit. It was the second win of Thomas Tuchel’s three-game reign so far, and gave the Reds a measure of revenge for their DFB Cup quarter-final elimination by Freiburg last week that ended the team’s hopes of another treble. Dayot Upamecano was suspended at the weekend, but will come straight back into the side in central defence, leaving Tuchel to decide between Man City loanee Joao Cancelo and Benjamin Pavard at right-back. Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting missed the game in Freiburg with a knee complaint and remains doubtful for the trip to England; should he lose his fitness battle, Sadio Mane is expected to start one more. Leroy Sane faces competition from Kingsley Coman to retain his starting berth against his former teammates in Manchester, while Leon Goretzka should be recalled in midfield.

Like Bayern, City are also involved in a tense title race. Former Dortmund striker Erling Haaland struck twice to take his tally to 42 goals in all competitions this season in his team’s 4-1 Premier League victory over Southampton on Saturday, a result that keeps them five points adrift of leaders Arsenal. It was an eighth straight win for Pep Guardiola’s side, who are chasing a maiden Champions League title after losing the 2021 final to a Chelsea side managed by Tuchel. Guardiola has fielded a 3-2-4-1 formation of late, with John Stones playing in defensive midfield and ex-Dortmund defender Manuel Akanji on the right of a back three. As they have won all four games in which such a line-up has been used, the Catalan coach could well keep faith with it. In addition to Haaland and Akanji, Kevin de Bruyne (formerly of Werder Bremen and Wolfsburg) and Ilkay Gündogan (Dortmund and Nuremberg) will be familiar faces to regular Bundesliga watchers.

Tuchel’s appointment as Bayern head coach during the March international break sent shockwaves around the footballing world, not least given Julian Nagelsmann’s aforementioned 100 percent record en route to this term’s Champions League quarter-finals. The defending Bundesliga champions arguably saved their best under Nagelsmann for Europe, encapsulated by the ease with which they beat PSG 3-0 over two legs in the round of 16. But if they were the form team after that tie, the Bavarians have to be considered the outright tournament favourites with Tuchel at the helm.