The purists against the puritans? The cavaliers against the cautious? It could seem so. Bayern Munich and Arsenal share a status as champions of their country and an ambition to be champions of Europe. Their managers were two of Pep Guardiola’s lieutenants, as his captain and assistant respectively at Manchester City. Some may say they learnt different lessons.
Arsenal go to the Allianz Arena after a win at Nottingham Forest in which they had a lone shot on target. Bayern had 17 in their weekend win over RB Leipzig and, while it is both lazy and easy to dismiss their domestic opposition as relative minnows, the reality is they walloped the team who finished third in the Bundesliga last year. Bayern have six goals in their last match, Arsenal six in their last four.
The counter-argument, of course, is that Arsenal have the best defence in Europe, the team that only conceded seven goals in 15 Champions League games last season, the only side to start the current campaign with consecutive clean sheets. By way of comparison, Bayern were breached three times by the Norwegian newcomers Viking last week.
Whether or not it is merely a quirk of the fixture list, this midweek features superpower summits, games between arguably the four likeliest sides to win the competition – though Real Madrid may disagree with that – in Paris Saint-Germain against Barcelona and Bayern hosting Arsenal.
Arsenal can look like the anomaly among them. Each of the other three can make a case to have the best attack on the continent. Bayern’s is supported by the statistics. Last season, they got a record 122 Bundesliga goals, bettered only by the Torino team of 1947-48 in a top-five European league. It was 51 more than Arsenal scored in winning the Premier League. In all competitions, Harry Kane got 61 himself. In all, Michael Olise got 22 goals and 28 assists.
Arsenal are spared the test of how to halt Olise; he stopped himself with his silly sending-off against Viking last week, and is suspended now. But the sense that these sides were playing very different versions of the same sport was underlined in May’s Champions League semi-finals.
Bayern went to the Parc des Princes and, with Paris Saint-Germain, contributed to a classic. There were still 20 minutes remaining when the score stood at 5-4. Fantasy football, perhaps, or a dereliction of duty in defending, in the eyes of some. Meanwhile, Arsenal found a more prosaic way of progressing to the final, drawing 1-1 away with Atletico Madrid and winning 1-0 at the Emirates Stadium.
Mikel Arteta’s way took him a round further than Vincent Kompany, even if both ended up exiting the Champions League at the hands of PSG. But that, in turn, was a consequence of the draw that stemmed from a shared excellence in the initial phase of the competition. Arsenal and Bayern were on opposite sides of the draw after finishing first and second in the group stage. Between them, they won 15 of 16 games, denied only a clean sweep by meeting each other: Arsenal won 3-1 at the Emirates last November.
That victory – with eight shots on target and an xG of 2.72 – could be seen as a sign Arsenal can create and score against the best. It is nevertheless the case that they look to have less firepower than they did in the Champions League final. Chief executive Richard Garlick spoke in the summer about wanting to bring in players who “change the dial”. Yet possible dial-changers like Vinicius Junior, Julian Alvarez and Morgan Rogers eluded them.
The only attacking addition, Christos Tzolis, is injured now. More forwards went out than in during the summer and one of those, Gabriel Martinelli, completed the scoring against Bayern last year. Another of the scorers that day, Noni Madueke, got the only goal against Forest; Eberechi Eze, who made way for Madueke at the break, struck against Lille last week. Yet while Arteta’s stand-in left wingers have scored, it still feels a problem position, and the one where they least look Champions League winners.
The questions facing Bayern swirl more around the defence. A former defender has been struggling: a virus meant Kompany had to miss Tuesday’s training session and sit out the pre-match press conference. Meanwhile, Manuel Neuer is a doubt and Jonas Urbig could deputise in goal.
Bayern and Arsenal can differ in other respects. The German champions brought in Ismael Saibari, who could stand in for Olise, and Nathaniel Brown this summer, but Arteta’s squad is constructed with a far greater emphasis on depth, on covering every base. If Arsenal have relative few goals of late, substitutes have scored in their last three games.
That is part of Arteta’s model: clean sheets, consistency, quality options. Bayern’s is based more around formidable firepower. After 184 goals last season, they already have 36 this season. Their strategy may be more entertaining, and if it is oversimplifying to call it attack versus defence when perhaps each is looking for a balance that involves playing to their strengths, it is a 90-minute examination of contrasting blueprints to win the Champions League.
