Munich 1-1 Leverkusen.
The match is Bayern Munich's home match. Moreover, the Bayern Munich team is in great form this season. We have seen Bayern Munich win every match by a big margin. Therefore, considering all aspects, the Bayern Munich team is considered as the favorite in this match.
The Leverkusen team is not weak. But this season they are not in great form like previous season. Leverkusen lost the match against Leipzig. It's been a long time since we saw the Leverkusen side lose a match. So it will be very difficult for Leverkusen to win the away match against Bayern Munich. My guess was that the match would be a draw or Bayern Munich would win.
The match is 1-1 at the end of the first half. But we saw Bayern Munich's dominance in the first half. Munich's players attacked a lot. Probably a total of 7 shots were taken by Munich players. But the interesting thing is that Leverkusen had only one shot in the first half and managed to score one goal. The second half is expected to be more competitive.
Bayern has been tested today and they show how strong that they are because they took possession of the ball all through the match. It was juat that they didn't create a good chance of scoring the second goal in order for them to win Leverkusen.
Leverkusen is not an easy side as Xabi Alonso is a good coach who saw how Bayern was out playing his men in the first half, he had to immediately change his game formation from 3-5-2 to 4-4-2 after the first half break in order to lessen the pressure that Bayern was mounting on his players. It was a goalless second half and the game ended in a 1-1 draw.
Bayern enjoyed much of the possession and and fired dozen of shots with 3 on target but only scored once. This goes to show how strong Leverkusen's defence is under Xabi Alonso. Even though Bayern was that ball-dominant, Leverkusen managed to keep very disciplined at the back and didn't allow much gap to be exposed to the attack line of Bayern. Another tactical switch by Alonso, changing from 3-5-2 to 4-4-2 after the break, also allowed a big part in decreasing the enormous pressure on his team in the second half of the game.
Furthermore, the change in formation orchestrated by Xabi Alonso did manage to relieve a bit of pressure off Bayern as well as steadied the defensive shape of Leverkusen. When Leverkusen switched to a 4-4-2 formation, they closed the gaps in the middle that previously existed for Bayern to manipulate, thus forcing them to play wide. It forced Bayern to look for other ways to attack since Leverkusen was defending very well, especially in their penalty area as the defenders were able to clear some good chances.