Bayern Munich will look to commence their UEFA Women’s Champions League campaign with a positive result when they welcome Arsenal to their FC Bayern Campus pitch on Wednesday night, with the visitors coming off the back of a disappointing 0-0 draw with Everton.
Alexander Straus addressed the media on Tuesday afternoon, insisting that he does not “want to change our identity but of course there’ll be some adaptation according to the opponent” when the Gunners head to the Bavarian capital.
What did Alexander Straus say?
Arsenal sit sixth in the Barclays Women’s Super League table with three games played. Bayern Munich, by contrast, sit two points clear at the top of the Google Pixel Frauen-Bundesliga with five games completed – but Alexander Straus insists his side have done just “fine.”
“We have done fine result wise, like it always is at the start of the season. The performances are a bit up and down but we’ve got the results we needed,” he told reporters.
“We need to understand that nothing is going to be decided tomorrow. It’s a good game against a good opponent, it’s a good part of our process to go in these games and test ourselves against the best and use our experience to develop our team further for the coming years.”
Planning for the future was a recurring topic throughout Straus’ lengthy press conference, with the Norwegian insisting: “We’re growing step by step. Sometimes there’ll be steps back but we’ll then take two forwards.”
Embed from Getty Images“Successful dynasties are built on sustainability and this willingness to stick together in the bad times. Luckily for us we have more good times than bad times,” he noted, before making comparisons with the well-documented success of Bayern’s men’s team.
“We have not won the Champions League before – our men’s team have, but we haven’t so we’re trying to come into the same history of what the men have done in this club before but we have to build our own legacy.”
“It’s not going to be a shortcut because we cannot compare to other teams that have owners going in with lots of money. But what we are doing is sustainable and we want this to be a place that is better suited for success on the days that we leave and move on.”
“This is very important for me – we have to leave this club in a better state than when we came in,” he emphasised.
As for what he expects from Arsenal when the two sides go head-to-head, the 48-year-old revealed: “We’re quite similar in the way we play. We played them two years ago and the strength is that they’ve a lot of individual quality.”
“The squad depth is second-to-none and that means that when we prepare for them, we know they can put this player on or this player on and continue to keep the same level. They also have a good model of play, a good game idea. We believe that we know what they’ll come with but it’s about being good enough to come up against them. We can hurt them with some of our game.”
Embed from Getty Images“I don’t want to change our identity. It’s bigger than one game – we need to try to trust our way of doing things and the way we want to play. Sometimes of course it’s difficult and with no disrespect to anybody, you play a different game when you play against Potsdam or Arsenal. We don’t want to change our identity but of course there’ll be some adaptation according to the opponent.”
“We want to have a good performance and perform at our maximum. The result will be what it is but the only thing we can control is our performance.”
“The shape and the principles of how they play won’t change, that’s pretty clear. We just need to defend well in those areas and hurt them in other areas of the pitch. We’ve prepared for it and we know their strengths but we also think that we’ve identified some weaknesses,” Straus concluded.
Bayern Munich get their UEFA Women’s Champions League campaign underway at 17:45 BST on Wednesday, 9 October 2024. The match will be shown live in the United Kingdom by DAZN, with extensive coverage also available on FromTheSpot.
