Key events
The second leg is in Munich a week tomorrow. The winners will meet Paris Saint-Germain or Liverpool in another heavyweight contest.
Real Madrid v Bayern Munich: a short history
double quotation mark There is footage of a notorious incident at the final whistlewhen an affronted Madrid fan hared on to the pitch, chinned Gerd Müller as he ran past and then floored the referee, Erich Linemayr, with one punch. A dazed Müller was carried from the field. Real were banned from European competition for a year; the newspaper Marca said: “Uefa has assassinated its own father.” Uefa brought him back to life when they lifted the ban a few weeks later. But Madrid were so irked that they hired a team of private detectives to track down the assailant. A 26-year-old waiter from Madrid was eventually identified.
The players on a yellow card
There are a few, including some big hitters.
Real Madrid Huijsen, Carreras, Tchouameni, Vinicius Jr, Mbappe, Bellingham.
Bayern Munich Laimer, Upamecano.
Team news
Real Madrid make three changes to the side that won 2-1 at the Etihad in their last Champions League game: Andriy Lunin, Alvaro Carreras and Kylian Mbappe replace Thibaut Courtois, Fran Garcia and Brahim Diaz. That means Jude Bellingham, who has only recently returned from injury, stays on the bench.
Bayern’s team is as expected, with two changesfrom the first leg of their 10-2 aggregate victory over Atalanta. (They picked a number of second-string players for the second leg and frankly there’s no point listing them all as they were never likely to start tonight and most of them are on the bench anyway.) Manuel Neuer and Harry Kane replace Jonas Urbig and Nicolas Jackson.
One battle to look out for: Trent Alexander-Arnold is up against his old Liverpool teammate Luis Diaz.
Real Madrid (4-2-2-2) Lunin; Alexander-Arnold, Rudiger, Huijsen, Carreras; Tchouameni, Pitarch; Valverde, Guler; Mbappe, Vinicius Jr.
Subs: Gonzalez, Carvajal, Eder Militao, Alaba, Bellingham, Camavinga, Gonzalo Garcia, Asencio, Ceballos, Francisco Garcia, Diaz, Mastantuono.
Bayern Munich (4-2-3-1) Newer; Stanisic, Upamecano, Tah, Laimer; Kimmich, Pavlovic; Olise, Gnabry, Diaz; Kane.
Subs: Urbig, Kim, Goretzka, Musiala, Jackson, Davies, Bischof, Ito, Guerreiro, Osmani, Karl.
Referee Michael Oliver.
Kane starts for Bayern
Harry Kane, who was doubtful for the game, is in the Bayern XI. We’ll have the full team news in a second.
Preamble
Hello, buenas noches, guten abend, and welcome to live coverage of Real Madrid v Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter-finals. Just as everybody needs a bosom for a pillow, so every football competition needs a clásico: an impossible-to-overhype-but-let’s-bloody-well-try contest between two giant teams. Hell, last weekend there were four clásicos on Hackney Marshes alone!*
With apologies to AC Milan, Joseph Bloggs and others, Real v Bayern is the clásico of European football. This is their 29th meeting and 14th two-legged tie, both Uefa records, and all have taken place in the European Cup or Champions League. In eight of the previous 13 ties, the winner went all the way that season.
It would be unwise to make such an assumption about this year’s tie, given the quality elsewhere in the competition, but whoever emerges from this heavyweight contest will understandably have the whiff of destiny in their nostrils.
Most people have Bayern as favourites: they finished second in the league phase, seven places ahead of Real, and are gallivanting to another Bundesliga title. Real, by contrast, lost to Mallorca at the weekend and are seven points behind Barcelona in La Liga.
Form, logic, reason, sanity: they rarely get a look-in when Real Madrid play in the Champions League. Anything could happen, which is just the way we like it ahead of a clásico.
Kick off 8pm.
* We may and indeed have made this up
