It‘s official: FC Bayern München are out of the Champions League. But you can’t say the team and especially the fans didn’t give their all to keep the campaign alive. While the Bayern supporters turned up to the stadium hoping for a miracle against Manchester City, it wasn’t quite meant to be on this occasion.
There was optimism on the way to the ground, even though there was some irony involved too. "Do we agree on a 4-0 today?" So asked two guys of a young girl and her father on the underground. The girl responded, "No, you always have to reckon with Haaland.But we can settle on a 5-1." The whole coach had a laugh but the positive outlook didn’t disappear the whole way to the stadium.
During the security check, an older couple were asked where they were from, because they were suspected to be City fans. But as it turned out, they were actually crossing their fingers for us. "We’re from Italy. Our team, AC Milan, won yesterday. We’ll meet in the final, you’ll see," they promised.
As kick-off approached, everybody suddenly started to believe that we could make it to the semi-finals. The whole crowd waved their scarves to the typical fan songs and when the official club anthem was played, everybody sang along so loud that from outside the stadium, even when the music was turned off, you could still hear them shout "FC Bayern forever number one!"
The highlight was when the heart of the Südkurve (South Curve) showed its support with an impressive tifo. They displayed the Champions League trophy on a red background with the words "Bayern" and "Kings of the Cup". Underneath, the message, "With chests out, fight until the end!" was written, to rouse the team.
After the Champions League anthem sounded, the arena turned into a madhouse. All the fans were singing and cheering as loud as they possibly could. But in the end, unfortunately all the support didn’t payoff. However, what everyone noticed is that the players left their hearts out on the pitch; they couldn’t have done any more to give us fans a European miracle.
The team and the fans stayed in the stadium until the very end and applauded together, capping off a tough Champions League season. Even on the way home it was noticeable that nobody was blaming the team for anything, because they all knew the first leg result was almost impossible to overturn.
In the end a young girl and her uncle summed up the evening pretty well. "We didn’t even play badly, we just didn’t use our chances," she said. And he replied, "Well, that’s football."
With a tear in my eye, me and all the otherBayern supporters waved goodbye to the Champions League for now. But it is best to never write us off, because this title is our goal every single season.
