A t the end of the final session at Bayern Munich’s Säbener Strasse training ground their players took penalties but Jupp Heynckes sai...
At the end of the final session at Bayern Munich’s Säbener Strasse training ground their players took penalties but Jupp Heynckes said it had nothing to do with the prospect of a shootout at the Bernabéu on Tuesday night.
Instead, their manager claimed, the explanation was simpler than that: the practice match had finished in a draw. Heynckes said there was no way to recreate the pressure and tension of penalties and dismissed Franz Beckenbauer’s suggestion that Bayern have a “complex” when it comes to Real Madrid but he did appeal for his side to seek “inner peace” as they arrived in Spain looking to reach the Champions League final on 26 May.
Bayern were defeated 2-1 in Munich but Heynckes believes the first leg showed Madrid could be “hurt” and welcomed the prospect of the semi‑final being decided from 12 yards. Although he said there would be small changes, he insisted that above all his side needed to be more “efficient” than in the first leg, during which they racked up 18 shots but finished with a sixth successive defeat against their European rivals – a run that includes two in last season’s quarter-finals. Bayern lost 2-1 at home then as well but levelled the aggregate score in Madrid, taking the tie into extra time before being defeated 4-2.
“Everyone saw we were defeated by two offside goals,” Thomas Müller said but the club’s honorary president had suggested there might be a different explanation. “There will never be a time when it’s so easy to beat them; they weren’t brilliant,” Beckenbauer claimed three days ago. “I fear we have a complex with Madrid.”
The other major problem they have is injuries: Jérôme Boateng, Arturo Vidal, Arjen Robben, Kingsley Coman and Manuel Neuer are absent.
“Recent losses play no part, because I wasn’t the coach then and tomorrow is a different team from last year,” Heynckes said. “For all of us here, what other people say is irrelevant – even if it is our president. This season we have shown we can be successful in close games and tomorrow will be very difficult for us but I think it will be for Real Madrid, too.
“I have a lot of players with experience, internationals who have had success, and we come here to take our chance. We face a team that has been champion two years in a row, three times in four years, and are used to big games, but we never surrender and we want to be in the final. Faith moves mountains. If you want to win the Champions League, you have to have talent, good players, luck in the draw and in certain moments the right referee.
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