Back home at last! On Saturday FC Bayern play their first home game of 2017 (15:30 CET, live ticker and radio). The visitors are FC Schalke 04, a side that Bayern haven’t lost to in 12 competitive meetings. Ten of those were wins and two were draws, with an aggregate score of 33-5. fcbayern.com has collected the key facts and stats ahead of the game.
Alaba’s favourite opponents
David Alaba should be particularly looking forward to Saturday’s game as the Austrian has good memories of playing the Royal Blues. The 24 year-old has never lost in 11 games against Schalke and has also scored three goals – he hasn’t scored more than that against any other single opponent in the Bundesliga. It is almost four years to the day that Alaba scored his first and only brace in a competitive game for the champions against Schalke. His first free-kick goal in Germany’s top flight also came against Schalke – and at the Allianz Arena.
Neuer with a strong record
Manuel Neuer spent the whole of his youth with the Gelsenkirchen club before moving to Munich in 2011. Since then he has played against his boyhood club 11 times, keeping seven clean sheets and only conceding four goals – never more than one in a game. He was on the winning side in nine of those games and had to settle for a point in the other two.
Long unbeaten run
FCB have hosted the Royal Blues 46 times in the Bundesliga and have won 32 of them, with the visitors taking the three points on only six occasions. The champions have scored 120 goals and conceded only 38, showing that they clearly have a strong record in front of their own fans. However they did suffer a bitter 7-0 thrashing at the Olympic Stadium in 1976 – FC Bayern’s heaviest Bundesliga defeat to date. Their most recent defeat against S04 was back in 2011, though, when the Munich side lost 1-0 at home in the semi-final of the German Cup. Since then there have been 12 meetings without defeat for FCB.
Golden February
February has been a truly happy month for Bayern fans in recent years. FCB are unbeaten in their last 25 games in all competitions in the second month of the year, and their last defeat was five years ago in the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 match against Basel. Four days after that, a 2-0 home win against Saturday’s opponents started a run of 21 victories and four draws in the shortest month of the year.
The man in the middle
Saturday’s referee is Marco Fritz who has already officiated two FC Bayern games this season. The 39 year-old banker from Korb was the referee for the home games against Hertha BSC (3-0) and Bayer Leverkusen (2-1). Fritz will be assisted against FC Schalke 04 by Daniel Schlager and Marcel Pelgrim, with Lasse Koslowski as fourth official.
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