Victory in Greece has put Bayern München in a strong position in Group E as they welcome AEK Athens on matchday four looking for their first home victory of this season’s UEFA Champions League.
• Bayern stretched their unbeaten run against Greek clubs to ten games with a 2-0 success at AEK on 23 October thanks to two goals in three second-half minutes from Javi Martínez and Robert Lewandowski.
• That left the German champions on seven points, joint top of the section with Ajax – while AEK have lost all three matches. Bayern will therefore be through with a win if Benfica lose at Ajax in the section’s other matchday four contest; AEK will be unable to finish in the top two if they lose, or if they draw and Ajax avoid defeat.
Form guide
Bayern
• Having opened Group E with a 2-0 win at Benfica, Bayern were held to a 1-1 draw by Ajax in their first home game.
• The Ajax draw made it three European home games without a win for Bayern. They won their first four in 2017/18, before drawing with Sevilla in the quarter-final second leg and losing to Real Madrid in the semi-final first leg.
• Champions of Germany for a record 28th time last season – with a landmark sixth successive Bundesliga title – Bayern are in the group stage for the 22nd time.
• The Munich club have reached the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals or better in each of the last seven seasons. They last failed to progress from the initial group section in 2002/03, although they missed out altogether on the UEFA Champions League in 2007/08.
• For the second year in a row Bayern’s campaign was ended by Real Madrid in 2017/18, via a 4-3 aggregate semi-final defeat.
• Bayern have never lost to a Greek club, home or away (W8 D2), and have won four of out five at home – most recently a 4-0 success against Olympiacos in the 2015/16 group stage in which Robert Lewandowski, Thomas Müller and Kingsley Coman all scored. Bayern have scored 18 goals without reply in those five matches.
• The German side have kept clean sheets in their last seven matches with Greek opponents, scoring 15 goals across the four most recent contests.
AEK Athens
• Beaten 3-0 at Ajax in their first fixture, AEK went down 3-2 at home to Benfica on matchday two. The home defeat by Bayern made it three successive European losses – the Greek side have not lost four in a row in Europe since autumn 2011.
• AEK were 14 European games unbeaten (W4 D10), home and away, before the loss at Ajax. That result also ended a seven-match undefeated run away from home (W2 D5).
• AEK are in the group stage for the fifth time – and the first since 2006/07.
• All four of the Athens club’s previous UEFA Champions League group campaigns have ended at that stage.
• Greek champions for the 12th time in 2017/18 – their first championship success since 1994 – AEK entered this season’s UEFA Champions League in the third qualifying round, where they defeated Celtic 3-2 on aggregate (1-1 away, 2-1 home) to reach the play-offs. There they overcame Hungarian club Vidi 3-2 over two games (2-1 away, 1-1 home).
• The home win against Celtic ended AEK’s run of eight successive draws in European competition.
• Last season AEK lost to CSKA Moskva in the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round and moved into the UEFA Europa League, where they were eliminated by Dynamo Kyiv in the round of 32 despite avoiding defeat in all ten of their matches in the competition (W2 D8).
• AEK have won only two of their ten European fixtures against German clubs (D1 L7), both at home. They lost their first three games in Germany although the most recent, at Bayer Leverkusen in the 2000/01 UEFA Cup third round, ended in a remarkable 4-4 draw.
Links and trivia
• Has played in Germany:
Yannis Gianniotas (Fortuna Düsseldorf 2013/14)
• Have played together:
Thiago Alcántara & Dmytro Chygrynskiy (Barcelona 2009/10)
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