UWCL PREVIEW | Bayern Munich v FC Barcelona
When the season begins, a team with the highest ambitions, like this Barça side, sets itself a single objective: to reach the end of the campaign with a chance of winning everything. And there is always one competition that excites more than the rest. And that's the Champions League. That desire only grows stronger when, the previous season, you came so close to lifting the trophy, only to fall in the final.
Final hurdle
Pere Romeu’s side, however, once again find themselves in a position to win Europe’s top competition. After an almost flawless run, and having swept aside their biggest rivals, Real Madrid, in the quarter-finals, the final obstacle before the Oslo showpiece is another giant: Bayern Munich. The semi-final gets underway this Saturday at 6.15pm CET in the majestic setting of the Allianz Arena.
A luxury stage for the culers to reproduce the outstanding football they have shown in recent weeks and take a positive result back to the Spotify Camp Nou for the second leg. It won’t be easy, of course, even if it might seem so given that the two sides met at the Johan a few months ago on matchday one, when the blaugranes brushed the Bavarians aside by an extraordinary scoreline of 7–1.
German champions
That game, however, is the only one Barça's semi-final opponents have lost all season. Since that 7 October defeat, they have recorded 26 wins and just one draw, numbers that underline a team that has not reached the Champions League semi-finals by chance. Like Barça, Bayern have also just been crowned league champions, with four matches to spare and 15 points clear of Wolfsburg.
Barça are fully aware of the danger posed by their opponents and will need to perform at the very highest level if they are to win in a stadium they have visited only once before, and where they lost. That was in 2022, in the group stage, a 3–1 defeat. All the same, the ingredients are there for one of the finest football spectacles European football can offer.