April 11, (THEWILL) – Bayern Munich coach, Julian Nagelsmann, has pledged that his team “will not play badly against the same opponent twice”, in their Champions League match against Villarreal.
Bayern Munich welcomes Villarreal to the Allianz Arena with a 1-0 deficit from the first leg last week.
The Bundesliga leaders are hoping to avoid losing in the quarter-finals for the second year in a row. Bayern had only been eliminated in one of their previous nine quarter-final matches in the competition, against Real Madrid in 2016-17, when they succumbed to PSG in the last eight.
Unai Emery, the coach of Villarreal, remarked after the first leg that he regretted his team’s inability to capitalise on additional opportunities to expand their lead.
Bayern did not score in a UEFA Champions League tie since February 2019 when they met Liverpool, and Nagelsmann insisted the bad performance would not be repeated on Tuesday.
“We played a bad game and they played their best game”, Nagelsmann told a news conference.
“This will not happen again, to play badly against the same opponent twice.
“We delivered in the past and it should be like that. We have to, we must, we want to. It is normal when you win so many titles and have such success for so many years that you maybe need this pressure sometimes to get the maximum out.
“Maybe it will be a sparkling game from our side. We must turn up our complete intensity level. We did not take the last steps, the last metres in the first leg. We have to play more uncomfortable football.”
Nagelsmann continued: “We made many mistakes. They made one to keep us alive. They could have scored more goals but we are still alive and we should show it on the pitch.”
Bayern Munich is seeking to advance from a Champions League knockout tie after losing the first leg for the first time since the 2014-15 quarter-finals, and it was their 20th defeat in European competition against a Spanish team, the most against teams from a single country.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
