The months of winter break in European football, prolonged by the FIFA World Cup are finally over. The UEFA Champions League returns with a bang on Tuesday. In the headline match the French champions Paris St. Germain face off against Bavarian giants Bayern Munich at the Parc des Princes in the first leg of their Round of 16 tie.
While it is certainly true that both teams are coming into the game without having been in top form recently, The Champions League knockout stage does tend to bring the best out of players.
Both teams are leading their domestic leagues. But not as comfortably as they are accustomed to at this stage. PSG lead the French Ligue 1 by five points ahead of their closest rivals Olympique Marseille. They come into the Bayern match having lost 3-1 to AS Monaco at the weekend. In that game, the team rested several of their star players. The Champions League is the highest priority for Christophe Galtier’s men. Particularly because of the money invested by the Qatari ownership group, without much reward on the continental front as of yet. They can ill afford to exit the competition at this stage yet again.
Meanwhile, an exciting title race is developing in the Bundesliga for the first time in years. The Bavarians find themselves just a single point ahead of hard-working Union Berlin and three points above their longtime rivals Borussia Dortmund in third-place. Even after their 3-0 win against VfL Bochum at the weekend, coach Julian Nagelsmann decided to criticize his side publicly on live television, saying that this sort of performance would not be enough on Tuesday. That shows the kind of pressure Bayern as a whole and Nagelsmann in particular are under. The fact that the team was eliminated in the quarterfinals by Villareal last season certainly did not go over well with the Bayern hierarchy. The coach is expected to do better in his second year. An exit in the Round of 16 would be unacceptable to Bayern as well.
The home team will be without the services of Nordi Mukiele and former Bayern man Renato Sanches due to injury. Attacking stars Kylian Mbappé and Lionel Messi were also rumored to miss the match for the same reason, but they became fit on time it seems.
Bayern will not have Manuel Neuer, Lucas Hernandez, Sadio Mané, or Noussair Mazraoui available for the match also for medical reasons. While Thomas Müller is also a slight doubt ahead of kickoff.
The teams meet again after the Munich side was victorious in the 2020 Champions League final between them, while PSG prevailed when they played in the quarterfinals the following season. Those encounters were all decided by a single goal. This two-legged affair will likely be similarly competitive. While nothing is of course ever certain in football, it is unlikely that either team will leave the Parc des Princes with a significant advantage going into the decisive leg in Munich’s Allianz Arena in three weeks’ time.
Judging based on how much is on the line for both sides, it is sure to be an interesting and highly entertaining matchup. At the same time, neither team will likely want to risk too much in the first leg.