Olympiacos coach Marco Silva feels his players will be facing the best team in the world when they line up against Bayern Munich in the Champions League on Tuesday.
Advertisement
The Gunners must beat Croatia’s Dinamo Zagreb at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday to keep their hopes alive and need second-placed Olympiakos to lose in Munich.
Paris: Bayern Munich joined Barcelona in sealing qualification for the last 16 of the Champions League last night with a crushing 4-0 win against Olympiakos in Germany.
But Bayern’s lead lasted just eight minutes after Leroy Sane went on a brilliant run to set up Max Mayer whose low effort beat the desperate dive of Manuel Neuer.
As the game grew into the second half, Schalke were looking more tired, and Lewandowski was once again close to edging Bayern ahead, nodding over from Arjen Robben’s ball into the box. I think Olympiakos are going to give it a go here though and defensively they have been very tough to break down for teams.
Bayern took a fortuitous lead in Gelsenkirchen when Alaba’s long-range shot clipped Leon Goretzka’s heel and flew into the Schalke net with nine minutes gone.
Starting his first match of the season, the injury-plagued defender was shown a straight red card after bringing down Brown Ideye and in the eye of the referee denying the Nigerian striker a clear goal-scoring opportunity.
“We are hungry, we have a team with a super character and we are enjoying the game, celebrating football”, said Mueller.
With the end result, Bayern safe their development to the knockout levels with one spherical to spare in the meantime Olympiacos face Arsenal for a winner-takes-it-all encounter.
The second half saw more goals, with Messi setting up Gerard Pique for Barcelona’s fourth before scoring himself after another Neymar-Suarez combination.
It always looked like a case of when rather than whether Bayern would qualify from Group F. “We want to score as early as possible”, declared coach Josep Guardiola prior to the Olympiacos match, and early goals are exactly what his players delivered.
Advertisement
Chelsea remained in the hunt to advance from Group G after easing past 10-man Maccabi Tel Aviv 4-0. Coman got a bloody nose for his troubles when he headed in Muller’s flick towards goal and collided with onrushing Roberto.
