Confidence is soaring at Bayern on the back of an 18-game unbeaten run prior to the Champions League Round of 16 return leg away to AC Fiorentina on Tuesday (Live in English from 8.30 pm CET on Web Radio). Following a knife-edge 2-1 win in the first meeting, Munich need only a draw to make the last eight, but the FCB camp is refusing to indulge in games of ifs and buts.
“We’re not the kind of team which can play for a certain result. We always try to win,” declared captain Mark van Bommel on the eve of the clash with the side lying tenth in Italy’s Serie A, a glamour fixture which will attract a sell-out crowd to the Stadio Artemio Franchi: “We’ll do what we always do: try to get forward and score,” Van Bommel continued.
“Our fate is in our own hands,” agreed chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge ahead of the flight to Tuscany. “I’m looking forward to what will be a very interesting game, and I hope we achieve our goal, which is a place in the quarter-finals.” However, that will require an improvement on the display in Cologne at the weekend, where FCB drew 1-1. “We saw both faces of this Bayern team on Saturday,” observed Rummenigge, calling for “the approach we took in the second half against Köln” right from the start in Fiorentina, “because we don’t want any nasty surprises.”
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