MUNICH, April 18: Bayern Munich could yet crown a disappointing season with the Champions League title. Arsenal faces the prospect of ending a promising season with no trophy.
Joshua Kimmich’s header powered Bayern to a 1-0 win over Arsenal on Wednesday to reach the Champions League semifinals with a 3-2 victory on aggregate.
With the score at 2-2 from the first leg in London.
Kimmich’s header off Raphael Guerreiro’s pinpoint cross put Bayern ahead in the 63rd minute as Bayern largely neutralized the English team’s attack.
Arsenal’s players were “gutted,” manager Mikel Arteta said, “I cannot find the right words to lift them.”
Bayern kept alive its hopes of finishing the season with a trophy three days after Bayer Leverkusen ended Bayern’s 11-year reign as German champion. Striker Harry Kane who spoke Tuesday of being motivated by his release from Arsenal as a youth player takes a step closer to what would be the first trophy of his career.
Tuchel said it meant “really a lot” to beat Arsenal. “The semifinals are an important step, the last four, that was fun,” he said.
Bayern and Arsenal have been drawn together five times in the knockout stages of the Champions League since 2005 and the German team has eliminated Arsenal on each occasion.
Arsenal’s Champions League exit follows a heavy blow to its Premier League title ambitions in a 2-0 loss to Aston Villa on Sunday.
Defeat also rules Arsenal out of next year’s Club World Cup in the United States, in favor of Austrian team Salzburg.
Tuchel who is leaving at the end of the season becomes a Champions League semifinalist as coach of three different teams, having led Paris Saint-Germain to the 2020 final before winning the competition with Chelsea a year later. (AP)
