After the drama of Tuesday night, nothing can be taken for granted. Two superclubs have been dumped out of the Champions League, so what is to stop the same happening on Wednesday evening?
The battered, bloodied egos of Barcelona and Manchester City now serve as a warning. Unceremoniously booted into the wings by the tenacity of Roma and the brutality of Liverpool, their fate now lingers in the air, a cautionary tale for Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.
Bayern, in particular, are out to avoid a similar embarrassment on Wednesday. They take a 2-1 lead into their quarter-final second leg against Sevilla, but they know that the job is far from done.
Bayern Munich have been smiling this season but that could all change come the summer
The German giants are currently preparing for their Champions League clash with Sevilla
Bayern lead 2-1 going into the second leg of the quarter-final taking place on Wednesday night
‘Sevilla are highly dangerous,’ said striker Sandro Wagner at the weekend. ‘Their quality is brutal.’
Brutality, of course, is something that Bayern know all about themselves. They come into this game as freshly crowned German champions, having sealed a sixth consecutive German title with a win over Augsburg on Saturday.
Nor are they only dominant domestically. Bayern’s formidable home form in the Champions League is the biggest argument against a miraculous Sevilla comeback in Munich on Wednesday. Bayern have scored three or more goals in all of their four home games in Europe this season, conceding just one in front of their own fans.
Yet strange things happen in football sometimes, as Barcelona fans will attest, if they are not still in a state of speechless shock. Sevilla’s president Jose Castro warned Bayern not to write his team off on Wednesday, while coach Jupp Heynckes insisted that his team must be at their very best.
‘This is a phase in which we need to be in absolutely top form, in the best condition,’ said Heynckes this week.
Having already won the Bundesliga title, Bayern are bidding to win a sixth European Cup
With David Alaba and Arturo Vidal missing, Bayern are not quite at full strength. Yet it is not so much the absentees as the mentality which could cause them problems on Wednesday. Bayern can only really beat themselves in Munich: their biggest enemies will be complacency and absent-mindedness.
This, after all, is a period in which there is much to think about at Bayern’s HQ on the Saebener Strasse. While everyone tries to focus on the task in hand, the endless chatter around the club is shifting the focus constantly towards the future. For all their success on the field, Bayern are looking a little chaotic off it at the moment. Their planning for next season is lurching from one problem to the next, as questions persist over which coach, and which players, will still be there in the summer.
With their contracts running out, both Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery may yet leave Munich this summer. Both have taken to signing one-year rolling deals, and Robben promised on Tuesday that ‘there would be a discussion in the coming days’. But the ongoing questions over their future, as well as that of Robert Lewandowski, have exposed how much Bayern could suffer if they were to suddenly lose two or three of their most influential stars.
The question that looms over everything, though, is who will succeed Jupp Heynckes. The 72-year-old, who so dramatically turned Bayern’s fortunes around this season, has confirmed that he will not be staying for another year. For Bayern, who had found their perfect man in Heynckes, that was something of sucker punch.
However, Arjen Robben (left) and Franck Ribery could be two potential exits this summer
Robert Lewandowski is another influential star who may leave Bavaria at the end of the season
One key figure who is definitely leaving the club this summer is manager Jupp Heynckes
A low-level power struggle between president Uli Hoeness and CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has not made the search for Heynckes’ successor any easier, while both men seem to have shot themselves in the foot by saying that Bayern’s next coach must be a German speaker.
With Joachim Low and Jurgen Klopp happily employed, and Thomas Tuchel having turned Bayern down, Bayern are fast running out of time and options. The most probable solution seemed for a while to be one of the Bundesliga’s many young, developing coaches: Hoffenheim’s Julian Nagelsmann, Leipzig’s Ralph Hasenhuettl or Frankfurt’s Niko Kovac.
All of those three, however, are proving difficult to prise away from their respective employers. And even if Bayern do pick one of them, they will undoubtedly be taking a risk. A relative lack of experience could soon prove problematic at a club of Bayern’s size.
Julian Nagelsmann is in the running to succeed Heynckes but lacks little experience
That is particularly true in the Champions League, of which Hasenhuettl, Nagelsmann and Kovac have little or no experience. Any one of them would amount to a significant step down from Heynckes, who is an undisputed Champions League legend.
The veteran coach had only entered the competition three times before this season, but has reached the final on each occasion. He has won the title twice, once with Real Madrid and once with Bayern. On nights like this, where it is about delivering on the biggest stage, Heynckes just seems to know how it is done.
‘The Champions League is something special for every coach and every player,’ he said this week.
For Bayern, it is perhaps the only truly special competition left. After muted title celebrations at the weekend, the Champions League is now the be-all and end-all. Unlike their endless array of domestic titles, Bayern cannot afford to take this one for granted.
Niko Kovac is another being targeted by Bayern – but like Nagelsmann his CV is relatively short