Bayern Múnich opens the Champions League league phase at the Allianz Arena against Bodo Glimt, a first European meeting that puts the favorite on home turf and hands Vincent Kompany the kind of night that starts to define a campaign. The match is the first jornada of the league phase, and for Bayern it arrives with the kind of record that usually turns expectation into pressure.
That record is hard to ignore. Bayern won the Supercopa de Alemania against Borussia Dortmund, began its Bundesliga season with a 5-1 win over Stuttgart and a 0-0 away draw against Schalke 04, and reached the semifinals in the previous Champions League. It has also won its opening Champions League match in each of its last 22 editions, a run that says as much about habit as it does about quality.
Bodo Glimt is not arriving as a filler opponent. It qualified by beating Union Saint-Gilloise and NEC Nijmegen, and its European file already includes wins against Inter, Atlético de Madrid and Manchester City. Last season it went all the way to the round of 16 in its Champions League debut, and in its last visit to a German team it drew 2-2 with Borussia Dortmund. That is the sort of travel record that makes a favorite keep one eye on the script and the other on the risk of a break in it.
Still, the market has not made the task look especially attractive for anyone looking to back Bayern simply because Bayern is Bayern. The home side’s 38-match unbeaten run in the league phase and group stage, a stretch built on 36 wins and two draws, is the obvious backbone of the case for victory. But low betting value is the quiet hitch in the story: the result may look simple, while the price to play it is not.
That is the line Kompany walks on opening night. Bayern has kept its main figures in place for another Champions League run, and the demand now is not just to start well, but to start in the manner expected of a historic European powerhouse. Bodo Glimt has already shown it can unsettle bigger names. The next test is whether it can do it again in Munich, where Bayern rarely lets an opening night drift away.
