Champions League: Lazio Beat Bayern Munich To Put Pressure On Tuchel

Lazio earned a hard-fought 1-0 win over Bayern Munich in the first leg of the Champions League second round clash to pile pressure on Thomas Tuchel.

The Bavarians lost 3-0 to Bayer Leverkusen to dampen their Bundesliga title hopes and followed it up with another poor showing against Lazio in Italy.

Bayern Munich have been struggling lately and questions have been asked of Thomas Tuchel’s future and the performance on Wednesday night intensified the pressure on the German manager.

Immobile gave Lazio the lead in the second half from the penalty spot after Upamecano fouled Isaksen in the 18-yard box and he was sent off for the offence.

Bayern Munich struggled to find their way back in the game as Lazio denied them the opportunity to hurt them and they held on to a precious first leg win.

Under pressure Bayern Munich manager, Thomas Tuchel admitted that his side did not do enough to emerge victorious in the encounter.

Tuchel said: “In the second half, however, we lost our momentum and concentration, I don’t know why,”

“We did everything to lose this match—it was in our hands. At a certain point, we stopped believing. There were many individual mistakes.”

“Of course we’re frustrated and angry about the defeat. I don’t know why, but we lost the plot at half-time. We lost the game, it wasn’t that Lazio won it. It was a good first half. We had one great chance to score and two normal ones. But we ended up with no shots on goal, and that means you can’t score either.”

Lazio coach, Maurizio Sarri was full of praise for his side’s performance in the encounter.

“If we always played like that, we’d have a different position in Serie A too. We could have scored another goal at the end, that’s the only thing I can criticise today. I’m really proud of the result.”

The second leg is slated for March 5 at the Allianz Arena and Bayern Munich will be hoping to turn the tie around to stand a chance of qualifying for the next round.

In the other Champions League match on Wednesday night, PSG defeated Real Sociedad 2-0 courtesy of goals from Kylian Mbappe and Bradley Barcola.