Champions League holders Bayern opened their title defence exactly as they wanted to with a comfortable 3–0 victory over CSKA Moscow in their first Group D fixture on Tuesday night FCB share top spot in the section with Manchester City, who won their opening match away to Viktoria Plzen by the same score. “This team has real quality,” enthused Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, making no secret of his delight at “a top-class performance.”
Reaction to Bayern v CSKA Moscow:
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge: “This team has real quality, and we have complete faith in the players. We know they’re always capable of a performance like this. Today, they’ve picked up where they left off in London against Dortmund: with a top-class performance.“
Pep Guardiola: “We played well, especially in the first half. I’m very, very pleased, and very proud about this performance. The first match after you’ve won the Champions League is never easy. Everyone thinks it’ll be simple, but it’s never easy at this level.”
Philipp Lahm: “We’re pleased because we were up for it right from the start and played with plenty of aggression.”
Arjen Robben: “It felt good again today. It's a fantastic feeling when you hear the Champions League anthem. We were all looking forward to it. There was a difference today compared to Saturday. We played well today, but we have to keep our feet on the ground. CSKA were good opponents, so winning 3-0 is a good start. The first task is to survive the group stage, and then we’ll take it as it comes. We’re in a process of development and we can still get better. But we’ll take it on from here.“
Leonid Slutski (CSKA coach): “Our opponents were very strong and took all their chances. They were one step ahead of us throughout the match. We conceded the first goal much too early, it caused us a lot of problems and dictated the course of the match. After that, we didn’t create many chances on the break, but we made very few openings in any case.”
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