Champions League - Will Bayern enjoy any home advantage at all?
Chelsea vs Bayern Munich
Ever since the start of the knockout stages of the UEFA Champions League, there has been incessant talk of how Bayern Munich would be extra motivated to reach the final because it would be held at their home ground, the Allianz Arena in Munich.
Now that Bayern actually have reached the finals, slated to be held on the 19th of May, after a brilliant penalty shootout victory against Real Madrid, I would like to analyse whether Bayern would really enjoy any home advantage and delve deeper on what, if anything, constitutes home advantage.
Technically seen, Bayern actually don’t enjoy much of this so-called home advantage.
For many of us, home advantage deals with the presence of a partisan crowd cheering for the home team. For the Champions League final, as for any major tournament final, there is an equal seat allocation for fans of both teams and the rest is divided between allocations for the sponsors, the European football authorities and some are reserved for the general public. So ofcourse, no real brownie points for being a Bayern Munich season ticket holder. And so, no cauldron like atmosphere at the Allianz Arena on the 19th. Ffan base wise, the fact that the final is being held in Munich is merely a coincidence. It may well have happened in London and wouldn’t have made that much of a difference.
The dimensions of the playing area and the goals are, ofcourse, the same. Munich is an hour’s flight from London, so no problems there. Both get the same amount of time to prepare for the big night.
I seriously believe that modern day technology and communication has wiped out what traditionally constituted home advantage. Home advantage in earlier times, to a large extent, meant travelling long journeys to play in largely alien conditions with little, if any, home support. Now, those barriers have largely been wiped out.
Sample this, there have been maximum number of away wins in this season’s English Premier League in the League’s 20 year history, including freak results like United 1-6 City and Chelsea 3-5 Arsenal.
Home advantage is purely psychological. If you are a decent footballer, you’ll be a decent footballer anywhere, in any stadium. Hostile crowds are even said to drive some players to achieve greater heights. Cristiano Ronaldo is probably the best example of this fact that I’ve come across. Deemed ‘Public Enemy Number ’1 after the infamous quarterfinal vs England in World Cup 2006, he came back to United and had an astonishingly successful season, despite being booed at every ground in the country.
A shrewd manager, positive tactics and the effective implementation of those tactics would make for a solid and well-drilled team on any away day. Bayern themselves played such a controlled game at the Bernabeu in the 2nd leg of the semis of the Champions League.
Home advantage. Or not?
Trust Manchester United legend, Bobby Charlton, to hit the nail on the head.
‘ I’m often asked how home advantage can be so important. Of course the crowd count for a great deal. These fans of ours could lift any team. But it’s more than that. It’s like being in your own house. You know exactly where everything is and precisely where you stand in relation to every piece of furniture.’
‘As a player, it’s the same geography. Your radar works off every landmark. For my generation, at first, it used to be the factory chimneys. You could see them from inside the ground. They were all different and when your brain picked them up from the corner of your eye as you were running you just knew instinctively how hard to hit the pass, precisely where to aim the shot, exactly when to send over the cross. Now it’s a curve in the seating line, the angle to the scoreboard, the lettering in the roof of the stand, the mouth of the dressing room tunnel. It’s subliminal.’
All this theory will be tested on the night of the 19th. It remains to be seen how much curve on the seating lines would help Bayern ‘s cause to add another European trophy to their cabinet. A dogged and determined team like Chelsea won’t obviously take it lying down and would be brimming with confidence, after miraculously coming back from the dead to beat Barcelona. Chelsea actually won’t mind being the ‘away’ team in this case. After all, they played like an away team would even in the 1st leg vs Barcelona at the Bridge, and came away with a positive result!
Chelsea have a decent away record in the knockout stages this season. They came away with a deserved 1-0 success at Benfica in the quarters. They had a poor game in Naples in the Round of 16, a game that signalled the end of the Villas-Boas era at the club.
But this is not an away match, as many would like to think. It should be seen as a one-off match, which incidentally is being held in Munich. If we consider the curve on the seating lines or not, the better team will win. And after seeing Bayern’s capitulation this weekend in the German Cup Final, it increasingly looks like Chelsea would lay their hands on the trophy.
And how ironical would that prove to be.