It is the AUDI Cup 2011 final everyone at Bayern wanted to see: the men from Munich held their nerve against AC Milan on Tuesday evening, booking a place in Wednesday’s final with a 5-3 penalty shoot-out victory over the Serie A champions after a 1-1 draw in normal time. Germany’s biggest club now meet Barcelona, who also needed penalties to beat Porto Alegre giants SC Internacional in the first semi-final.
A 66,000 sell-out crowd at the Allianz Arena saw a one-sided contest between the home heroes and the visitors from northern Italy. Jupp Heynckes’ men controlled the play throughout, but had to chase the game at first after Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s fourth-minute opener for AC. Toni Kroos netted the overdue equaliser before the break, but Munich were unable to turn their dominance into further goals in normal time. The game went straight to penalties, where Bayern converted all five of their spot-kicks, but Alberto Paloschi skied Milan’s fourth.
“Overall, I’m very pleased with my team’s performance,” Bayern boss Jupp Heynckes commented afterwards, “we weren’t very good in the first ten minutes, but after that my team showed lots of patience, kept possession well, and created plenty of chances, which we unfortunately didn’t make the most of. You have to remember we’re still in pre-season and we’ve trained very hard in recent weeks, although obviously there are areas we definitely still have to work on.“
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