Champions League: Scotland the Brave Face Up to Bayern… Again

Bayern Munich vs Celtic

Glasgow Celtic’s 2025 Champions League campaign has one more roll of the dice to come, but the odds are heavily stacked against the Scots as their task is to overturn a 2-1 deficit away to the mighty Bayern Munich.

Both teams come into the second leg on the back of a good result in their domestic leagues. After beating third placed Dundee United 3-0, on Saturday, Brendan Rodgers’ Celtic went 16 points clear at the top of the Scottish Premier League, with city rivals Rangers 16 ahead of Dundee United. Meanwhile Vincent Kompany’s Bayern Munich had a top two clash against Bayer Leverkusen to contend with, and his team picked up the point they needed to stay eight points clear at the top of the table in a 0-0 stalemate.

 

Talking Points

Kompany shows he’s learning fast

In his time at Burnley, the Bayern Munich boss broke records as the Clarets stormed to the Championship title, scoring for fun. But his season in the Premier League was little short of disastrous as he tried to play the same possession based attacking football, but Burnley conceded a whopping 78 goals and won only five games, the least in the clubs history. Kompany picked up the job in Munich and once again he had the best team in the league and soon they were scoring big again, but Bayern were dumped out of the DFB Pokal by Leverkusen. On Saturday, when Die Bayern met Die Werkself again, the Bavarians put on a defensive showing to be proud of, with a little help from the woodwork.

With 65 goals from 22 games, the Munich giants have been wiping oppositions away but against the 2024 champions they simply shut up shop, registering two shots all game and none on target while Leverkusen launched wave after wave of attacks. Centre back Dayot Upamecano was superb, putting his body on the line, time after time, while Die Werkself twice rattled the crossbar. It was a hard watch for Bayern fans but job done for Kompany, who knows that no team in the history of the Bundesliga has closed a gap of eight points with 12 games left.                         

Back in Europe, the latest Champions League 2025 betting odds make the Bavarians fifth favourites to win the title at a SBOTOP price of 9.00, or 4.50 to reach the title. While, at odds of 6.00 Harry Kane is the joint second favourite to win the Golden Boot, alongside current leader Serhou Guirassy, who has ten goals for Borussia Dortmund, and behind only Barcelona’s Robert Lewandowski.

I suspect, now that Bayern have shown they can defend, they will go out on the attack against the Scots.      

 

Rodgers still believes  

After his side fought back to lose the first leg 2-1 manager Rodgers made a rousing speech after the game, saying: “We hung in there against a really top side and we gave them problems, so we’ll take confidence from that. We now go over next week and we’re still right in the tie. There’s only a one goal difference.”  

After Bayern had gone two goals ahead Daizen Maeda halved the deficit to make it four goals in the competition, and alongside Adam Idah he will try to be the thorn in Bayern’s side. Idah scored a double against Aston Villa in their last Champions League stage game to make it three for the competition.

With the hugely experienced Kasper Schmeichel in the nets the Hoops do have an outside chance of springing a surprise but, as Rodgers knows, if the Scots can somehow escape from Munich with a win then they will dominate the Champions League 2025 news for sure.

 

History

As this is likely to be the last we see of Celtic in this season’s Champions League, it’s an opportunity to point out that they were once the Kings of Europe. Under the leadership of the legendary Jock Stein the Hoops beat Inter Milan 2-1 at the Estadio Nacional to become forever known as the ‘Lions of Lisbon.’ Celtic are 54 times Scottish champions and 42 times Scottish Cup winners and they were European Cup finalists again in 1970.

For their part, FC Bayern have won 33 Bundesligas, 20 DFB Pokal Cups and six European crowns. The Bavarians have won four and drawn one of their meetings with Celtic and, while both teams have won five from the last seven games, Kompany’s men have won their last seven at the Allianz Arena. 

 

Betting Tip

For all you Scots out there, the draw is priced at 7.20 and a Celtic win at 11.00. It promises to be another famous night under the lights in Europe… but one which will see the brave Hoops bow out. 

   

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