Champions Bayern Munich begin hunt for back-to-back triumphs
Published:No team has won back-to-back European Cups since the AC Milan vintage of Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten in 1990, but Bayern Munich’s quest to change that kicks off with a tie at home to CSKA Moscow.
Having been in the fortunate position of inheriting a squad full of treble winners, Pep Guardiola takes his squad into the Champions League as 10/3 favourites to lift the famous trophy for the second successive year.
Guardiola is one of just six men to have won the competition as both a player and as a manager, and following his two triumphs with Barcelona he’ll be targeting an even more illustrious place in the history books this season.
Win the competition, and Guardiola will join Liverpool’s Bob Paisley as the only man to have won the trophy as a manager on three occasions. His attempt to do so starts at home to CSKA Moscow, for which the Bavarians are priced at 1/6.
Value can be found elsewhere in the match though, and mostly at the feet of one of Europe’s best young players.
Thomas Muller only turned 24 last week, but the forward – the Golden Boot winner at the 2010 World Cup – seems as though he’s been around forever.
He enjoys the Champions League stage too, scoring 16 goals in Europe’s elite competition for Bayern – as well as four in the last four at the Allianz Arena.
Muller is available at 4/1 to open the scoring with Bayern’s first goal in defence of their trophy, whilst it is evens that he finds the net at any time against CSKA – the same price at teammates Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben.
Russian sides are traditionally considered poor travellers, and CSKA have won just three of their last 15 away Champions League ties, losing their last one 4-1 at Real Madrid.
A Bayern win with a two goal handicap is available at 11/10, which is the same price as a home win with over 3.5 goals in the game.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publication
