They made incredibly hard work of it, but thanks to a late, stoppage time goal from substitute Alphonso Davies, Bayern Munich drew Celtic 1-1 at the Allianz Arena and went through 3-2 on aggregate in the Champions League playoff round. Vincent Kompany’s side is now officially through to the round of 16 of the competition after doing enough in the home and away leg, but it was heartbreak for Celtic when Davies poked in a saved Leon Goretzka header by Kasper Schmeichel in the 94th minute.
On the overall balance, Bayern dominated most of the statistics on the match sheet, but Celtic certainly made life rather difficult for the Rekordmeister. Nicolas Kühn, capitalizing on a mistake at the back from Bayern’s Josip Stanišić, and a failed tackle from Kim Min-jae was arguably a deserved reward for Celtic. By no means was Brendan Rodgers’ side just sitting back and defending for the entire match, but the levy was bound to break with the amount of chances Bayern was throwing Schmeichel’s way, especially after Kühn’s goal.
Speaking after the match, Kompany put things into context. The two legs against Celtic might not have been anywhere near Bayern at their best, but they are still top of the Bundesliga and on to the next round of the Champions League after a tough stretch of fixtures. For him, how his side fared from the past six days has been up to snuff.
“It was a hard-fought draw, I thought we had many chances in the second half to score two-to-three goals. The context is important, we spent a lot of energy in the past six days. In the end, we’re 8 points ahead in the league and we’ve advanced to the next round in the Champions League. We now have some time to recover. Of course we always want to dominate and be much better than the opponent, especially here at Allianz Arena. But the result is always the most important thing. We’ll learn from this game. As I said, we have to look at the context, we played too many games. We fought hard three days ago in Leverkusen, and six days ago at Celtic Park to get the result that helped us today,” the Belgian manager explained (via @iMiaSanMia).
Photo by Sathire Kelpa/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images
Naturally, there will be a level of relief for Kompany, whether he wants to admit it or not. Despite being ahead by a decent margin in the Bundesliga, having already been knocked out of the DFB-Pokal brings added weight to the Champions League. Had they not made it past the playoffs against Celtic, serious questions would have to be asked, regardless of what the context was.
Looking for more thoughts and analysis of Bayern Munich’s dicey 1-1 draw with Celtic FC in the Champions League? Awesome, then react to the crazy result with us as we wipe our brow after a very nervy second half. You can get the Bavarian Podcast Works — Postgame Show on Patreon, Spotify, or below:
