Manchester United vs Bayern Munich tickets | SeatPick (2024)

With a collective total of nine European Cup/UEFA Champions League titles up to 2023, it would be fair to say that Manchester United and Bayern Munich are among the biggest sides in terms of their historical impact on continental club football.

They are also, obviously, two teams who have met before in the competition, with explosive results, and the interest in this game is therefore sky high.

Manchester United’s first European Cup title, indeed their only success prior to the rebranding of the tournament, came when Sir Matt Busby’s side defeated Benfica at Wembley in 1968. Their 4-1 win came after extra time and meant they were the first English side to win the competition.

They then had a very lengthy barren period in the competition, chiefly due to the fact that they failed to win the domestic title for the best part of 25 years and, therefore, didn’t qualify for the original trophy (which was only open to title holders, and reigning European Cup champions).

In marked contrast, during the 1970s, a Bayern Munich side that contained legends like Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller enjoyed prolonged success in the competition. They won three successive editions of the tournament.

Firstly, they beat Atletico Madrid 4-0 after a replay in 1974, and in 1975, it was Leeds United who were overcome. 1976 saw the hat-trick completed with a narrow 1–0 win over Saint-Etienne in Glasgow.

It took another decade to get back to the latter stages of the competition, and then in 1986/87, they were surprisingly beaten by FC Porto.

Manchester United vs Bayern Munich Head-to-Head

Then came the infamous 1999 UEFA Champions League Final between the two teams, which was, in fact, the third meeting of the two teams in that season’s competition. They were drawn into the same group and played out two fascinating clashes.

In the first game, in Munich, Giovane Elber gave Ottmar Hitzfeld’s side the lead after 11 minutes, but Sir Alex Ferguson’s side bounced back with goals from Dwight Yorke and Paul Scholes and looked set to get all three points before Elber netted in the 90th minute.

The return game finished 1-1, with Hasan Salihamidzic's second-half effort canceling Roy Keane’s first-half goal. Of the two sides, it was Bayern Munich that had the easier knockout stage draw. They defeated Kaiserslautern and Dynamo Kyiv to reach the final in Barcelona, while United had to edge past Italian giants Inter Milan and Juventus.

United were severely limited in their team selection for the final as both Paul Scholes and Roy Keane were suspended, and when Mario Basler netted a sixth-minute free-kick, it did look as if the game was Bayern Munich’s for the taking.

Indeed, the German side had plenty of chances to extend their lead, with Memet Scholl and Carsten Jancker both hitting the woodwork in the second half. Sir Alex Ferguson brought Teddy Sheringham on for Jesper Blomqvist, who had been ineffective, after 67 minutes and then, with nine minutes to go, followed that up by taking off Andy Cole and bringing on Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Manchester United won a corner at the same time as the fourth official put up his board to signal three minutes of injury time, and Danish keeper Peter Schmeichel went up to cause Bayern Munich’s defence trouble for the forthcoming David Beckham corner.

The ball pinged around the box and found Ryan Giggs, whose effort was not going to trouble Oliver Kahn, but Sheringham was on hand to redirect the ball into the net to send Manchester United fans berserk.

Then, less than a minute after the restart, United won another corner, and Beckham floated in a superb delivery; Sheringham nodded the ball on, and Solskjaer fired home to give United the lead, leaving Bayern Munich players visibly stunned on the turf.

Referee Pierluigi Colina blew his whistle shortly afterward to bring the famous final to a close. It was Manchester United’s first top-tier European title in over thirty years.

Sir Alex Ferguson led United to another win in 2008 at the hands of Chelsea but then saw his side beaten by FC Barcelona in both 2009 and 2011.

Bayern Munich managed to erase the memory of the final defeat in 2001 when they beat Valencia on penalties at the San Siro after a 1-1 draw. In 2009/10, they tasted final defeat again, albeit against an Inter Milan side that controlled the game and won a relatively easy game 2-0 in Madrid.

In 2012, they faced Chelsea in the final and were 1-0 up with only a couple of minutes left to play before Didier Drogba equalized. Jupp Heynckes's side then lost on penalties to the West London side.

A measure of revenge was secured when an Arjen Robben winner saw them home past German rivals Borussia Dortmund at Wembley Stadium in 2013, and they collected their sixth crown in 2020 when they defeated Paris Saint-Germain 1-0.

As well as facing each other in the 1999 UEFA Champions League Final, these two sides have met each other in four subsequent European campaigns.

In 2001, Bayern Munich knocked United out in the Quarter-Finals, winning 3-1 on aggregate, and the following season, they drew their two group-stage clashes. In 2009/10, the two sides once again met in the Quarter-Finals, with the Bundesliga side sneaking into the Semi-Finals on away goals after drawing 4-4 on aggregate.

2013/14 brought yet another Quarter-Final clash, but on this occasion, Bayern Munich eased into the next round by winning the second leg 3-1, having drawn at Old Trafford, to complete a 4-2 win.

Manchester United vs Bayern Munich Connections

A surprisingly large number of players have represented both Manchester United and Bayern Munich.

England midfielder Owen Hargreaves has done so, as have Marcel Sabitzer, Bastian Schweinsteiger, and Daley Blind.

Another who did so was Welsh wizard Mark Hughes. The stylish forward, who would later be converted into a midfielder, came through the ranks at Old Trafford and scored 47 goals in 121 games in his first spell at the club.

He then left to join FC Barcelona in 1986, partly down to the fact that English teams had been banned from European competitions due to the Heysel Stadium disaster.

He spent one season at Barcelona before being loaned from the La Liga side to Bayern Munich. In Germany, he scored seven goals in 23 games before going back to the Camp Nou and then sold back to Manchester United in 1988.

In his second spell, Hughes scored 116 goals in 352 appearances before leaving to join Chelsea in 1995. During his time with the club, he won the Premier League twice and the FA Cup on three occasions, but perhaps his most treasured memory of his time with Manchester United came when he scored twice to help secure victory over Barcelona in the UEFA European Cup Winners’ Cup Final in 1991.