Key events
This is what Bayern’s dressing-room looks like, before the players turn up. Isn’t it a bit … headache-inducingly awful?
This has just landed from Reuters:
An Italian fan was arrested in Munich on Monday for performing a Hitler salute after the police were called to a beer hall where a gathering of Lazio supporters had assembled. Bayern Munich host Lazio in the second leg of their Champions League Round of 16 tie on Tuesday. Lazio hold a 1-0 advantage from the first match. In a statement on Tuesday, Munich police said that an 18-year-old was arrested for performing the salute and released after posting a four-figure sum as bail. Italian media shared a video showing Lazio supporters congregating in a Munich beer hall, enthusiastically chanting “Duce! Duce! Duce!” – a familiar term for the former Italian dictator and ally of Hitler, Benito Mussolini.
It wasn’t just any old beer hall, either – it was the Hofbräuhaus, where Hitler officially marked the founding of the National Socialist Party in 1920. Lazio fans being Lazio fans (there are exceptions, obviously).
The teams
The teams are out, and they look like this:
Bayern Munich: Neuer, Kimmich, de Ligt, Dier, Guerreiro, Pavlovic, Goretzka, Sane, Muller, Musiala, Kane. Subs: Kim, Gnabry, Choupo-Moting, Zaragoza, Peretz, Davies, Ulreich, Laimer, Tel.
Lazio: Provedel, Marusic, Gila, Romagnoli, Pellegrini, Guendouzi, Vecino, Luis Alberto, Felipe Anderson, Immobile, Zaccagni. Subs: Kamada, Pedro, Casale, Isaksen, Castellanos, Hysaj, Lazzari, Cataldi, Sepe, Ruggeri, Magro, Napolitano.
Referee: Slavko Vincic (Slovenia).
Preamble
Bayern Munich, one win in five (and that, at home to Leipzig, needed an injury-time Harry Kane winner), play Lazio, two wins in five and three in nine, in a battle between teams that perhaps aren’t in a full-blown crisis yet but could be imminently, and that are already or could soon be looking for replacements for the former Chelsea managers who occupy their dugouts. They have much in common, but soon one will prevail. And neither has been doing a whole lot of prevailing of late.
Bayern are actually having a better season than last year (they’re two points ahead of their tally after 24 games then), when they won the league on goal difference, but Bayer Leverkusen are 10 points ahead of them so a similarly happy ending seems unlikely, and they were knocked out of the DFB-Pokal by tiny Saarbrücken back in November, so it’s very much this or nothing in the silverware stakes. Lazio can only dream of being 10 points behind the leaders in their domestic league – Internazionale are currently a full 32 points ahead of them, another seven sides sit between the two, and it’s a decade since Lazio last finished as low as ninth. They do at least have a Coppa Italia semi-final to distract them.
Lazio are a goal up after the first leg, in which Bayern had 17 shots but not a single one on target, and Ciro Immobile swept home from the spot after Dayot Upamecano had got himself sent off for fouling Gustav Eriksen. Thomas Tuchel, Bayern’s head coach, says he wants a “good mix of cool heads but still putting your foot on the gas in an emotional way. Patience is required … but we have no time to lose”. This sounds like a recipe for a pleasingly (for a neutral) chaotic game of football, which is precisely what I’m looking for. Thanks for joining me!
