ISTANBUL, Turkey: Bayern Munich will be looking to stretch its record 15-game winning run in the group stage of the Champions League on Tuesday with a victory at Turkish champion Galatasaray.
The Bavarian club is unbeaten in its last 36 games in the group stage — also a competition record — but will face a tough task in Istanbul, where Galatasaray drew 2-2 with Copenhagen in its first game. The team followed up with a 3-2 victory at Manchester United in its second.
Galatasaray defeated city rival Besiktas 2-1 on Saturday with two goals from Argentine forward Mauro Icardi. It stretched the team’s winning run to six games since the draw with Copenhagen.
Bayern has injury worries ahead of the first meeting between the clubs since the first round of the 1972-73 European Cup. The teams drew in Istanbul on that occasion, before Bayern comfortably won the second leg 6-0 in Munich with Gerd Müller scoring twice.
Bayern midfielder Leon Goretzka is out after undergoing surgery Sunday on a fractured hand.
Bayern coach Thomas Tuchel had already warned the day before that the team could ill-afford any more injuries.
Serge Gnabry, Raphaël Guerreiro, Dayot Upamecano and Noussair Mazraoui all missed Bayern’s 3-1 win in Mainz on Saturday, and Tuchel pointed out that defender Matthijs de Ligt was not fully fit after making his injury comeback.
Tuchel had previously complained that Bayern’s offseason transfer dealings had left the team short of options in defense after Benjamin Pavard’s transfer to Inter Milan and Josip Stanišić’s departure on loan to Bayer Leverkusen.
“Now it’s about making use of all we have. To use all the resources and give the guys confidence,” Tuchel said Saturday. “Now we can only recuperate, recuperate, recuperate at the highest level and then we go again in Istanbul.”