THOMAS TUCHEL believes Bayern Munich have a slight advantage over Arsenal due to the Champions League experience they can draw on.
The Bayern starting XI that earned a 2-2 draw away at the Emirates in last week’s quarter-final first leg contained five players that have lifted the famous European title.
In comparison, the Gunners have just two former winners, Kai Havertz and Jorginho, while the majority of their teammates are enjoying their first-ever Champions League campaign.
Bayern boss Tuchel, 50, has reached the final twice, winning with Chelsea in 2021, while Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, 42, has never coached at this stage in Europe before.
Tuchel explained: “We have a slight advantage with the experience in our team.
“We have players who have won it and played in decisive games, but to make it an advantage we have to bring it to the table. Nobody will give anything to us.
“If the experience in the group brings us an extra five per cent then we will take it.”
However, Tuchel also warned that Arsenal’s lack of experience could see them approach this mammoth Euro tie at the Allianz with no fear.
Arsenal’s last taste of the Champions League semi-finals came back in 2009, having failed to qualify for the tournament altogether between 2017 and 2023.
Tuchel added: “It can sometimes be an advantage not to have the experience, to have the role as a hunter and Arsenal can finally reach the semi-finals after a long time.”
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Bayern are in danger of finishing a torrid campaign without lifting a trophy after losing the Bundesliga to Bayer Leverkusen with five league games remaining and bombing out of the German Cup in the second round to third-tier FC Saarbrucken.
Tuchel said: “It’s a 50-50 match [against Arsenal]. I don’t know if we ‘have to win’ but we want to make the semi-final and then the final in London.
“It’s no secret that a Champions League win makes the season sweeter.”
Bayern will be missing several key names tomorrow with wingers Kingsley Coman [abductor] and Serge Gnabry [hamstring] out injured while full-back Alphonso Davies is suspended.
Keeper Manuel Neuer and forward Leroy Sane are set to start despite suffering with muscular strains, with Tuchel revealing that Sane is in constant pain and will need to “bite on his own teeth” to get through the match.
By Dave Kidd
BOTTLERS, chokers, shandy-drinking southern softies.
These were the charges levelled at Arsenal when they blew the title last season.
And even if the actual reason they failed was because William Saliba got injured and Rob Holding had to start, Mikel Arteta clearly took those accusations to heart.
If his team are not crowned champions next month, the Gunners boss has categorically ensured that they won’t go down being accused of nicey-niceyness.
Because, as well as being thrillingly entertaining and free-scoring when they want to be, this season’s Arsenal are also thoroughly horrible.
They are not here to make friends. They are not interested in being anybody’s second-favourite team.
And so, six days after stink-bombing the Etihad with a display of Mourinho-esque anti-football for a 0-0 draw, Arsenal turned up at the home of former bogey-team Brighton and s***housed their way to a thoroughly impressive 3-0 win.
How wonderful for the travelling Gooners to witness Ben White — against his former club — going down as if he’d taken a bullet to his neck when Brighton’s Pervis Estupinan brushed against him.
White is renowned as a gentle and decent bloke, intelligent enough to challenge the zeitgeist and claim there might be things in life other than football.
And yet suddenly he’s become some Diego Costa-style anti-hero hate figure, his wife goading the masses by posting social-media pictures of them playing a childish card game on a sun lounger after he’d refused an international call-up.
Because Arsenal are horrible again. Even Ben White is a villain.
And that might just be Arteta’s greatest triumph.
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