The draw was made for the Champions League semi-finals last week at Nyon in Switzerland with the draw pitting the best two teams in Germany up against the elite of Spain, with the door left open to a possible all-German, or all-Spanish final to be held in London on May 25th at Wembley Stadium.
The first game in the semi-finals will see Bayern Munich take on FC Barcelona at the Alliance Arena on the 23rd of April with the return leg to be played at the Camp Nou on the 1st of May.
The German know that they face a tough task in overcoming the Catalan giants and realize that they need to rack up the goals at home before traveling to Spain. Barcelona’s last round opponents AC Milan thought they had done enough winning the first leg 2-0 at the San Siro only to be taught a lesson in Barcelona when the home team put four goals away to seal the win.
Bayern for their part got the job done at home in the first leg defeating Italian Seria a leaders Juventus at home 2-0 before cruising past the Italians in Turin with the exact same score line to win 4-0 on aggregate.
Both teams now only have the Champions League to concentrate on, with Bayern already wrapping up the Bundesliga title and the Blaugrana all but assured of winning La Liga.
The Bavarian club are on a role determined to make this their year, and if they watched this season meetings between Barcelona and Real Madrid they will realize that the secret to stopping Barca is to coral Messi in, giving the little Argentinian no time on the ball.
When you take a good luck at the line-up they have in their team I am picking for my online sports bet Bayern Munich to beat Barcelona in Munich with live betting at williamhill at odds of 13/10 and as a small side bet Bayern to win 3-1 at odds of 18.
The second match in the semi-finals features Dortmund at home to Real Madrid, who managed to hold on in the second leg in Istanbul only losing 3-2 to Galatasaray thanks to a couple of goals from Cristiano Ronaldo following a valiant second half effort by the Turks that came to no avail with Real moving on to the semi’s by an aggregate score of 5-3.
Dortmund on the other hand were playing possibly soon to be Chelsea’s new boss Malaga manager Manuel Pellegrini, who is ranked in third place by the bookies behind Mourinho, and Everton’s David Moyes to take over from Benitez at the end of the season.
The first leg in Spain saw the two sides unable to score, giving Dortmund the home advantage for the second leg, but were shocked when trailing 2-1 going into extra-time pulled off a miracle with 91st and 93rd minute goals from Marco Reus and Felipe Santana, to give the Black & Yellows a very lucky win.
While Jose Mourinho will be concentrating on winning the Champions League just as Dortmund will be, and with nothing left domestically to play for Madrid are the obvious favourites in this match up.
What people fail to remember is that the two clubs met in the group stages of the competition drawing one match and seeing Dortmund win the other. In fact Dortmund remains the only team that has not lost a game in this season’s Champions League competition.
Last season the Westphalia club won the German League title, which has led to manager Jürgen Klopp seeing European success.
The odds are good for Dortmund as they are by most people considered the weak team that is left, and yet I have a sneaky suspicion that they could pull of an upset so am going to bet the Underdog to go all the way, starting with Wednesdays match in Germany where I can get odds of 8/5 for a Dortmund win.
