Real Madrid Win First Leg Meeting With Bayern Munich

 1-0 

The Champions League action continued today with Real Madrid hosting Bayern Munich in the other semi-final first leg.  The defending champions have been quite exceptional this season, particularly in the Bundesliga winning in a landslide.  Real Madrid, on the other hand, probably will not win La Liga, but did just come off a big win against rival Barcelona to lift the Copa del Rey.

Today Bayern Munich got off the a great start despite playing on the road.  By half-time the Germans had nearly eighty percent of possession!  However, Munich could not produce a goal and found themselves trailing at the break.

Similar to their last match in the Copa del Rey final, Madrid played against a possession driven team and had to rely on the counter-attack to get ahead.  Madrid scored on one such counter-attack when Rolando played the rightback Coentrão in behind the Bayern back line.  Coentrão was then able to roll a pass across the face of goal for Benzema at the back-post.  Benzema easily finished with a tap in to take the lead, scoring the only goal of the match (19').

The second-half was more of the same with Munich keeping the vast majority of possession, yet failing to score.  Even with fifteen corner-kicks by the end of the match Bayern could not produce an equalizer and Madrid keeper Casillas came away with a clean sheet.

Expect Bayern to score at least one goal in the replay next week as the two square off for the second leg in Germany.  It is rare for Munich to be held without scoring and Real Madrid will have to come up big to shut them out twice in a row.