Football | Bayern beats Lyon 3-0, to play PSG in Champions League final

Lyon’s goalkeeper Anthony Lopes tries to stop Bayern’s Robert Lewandowski, who scored the 3rd goal

Monday, 3 am
PSG v Bayern
H 3.45, D 4.25, A 2.07
Oddschecker.com

The Champions League final will finally be a meeting of champions again.
Bayern Munich made sure the title match will live up to the competition’s name by beating Lyon 3-0 yesterday [Macau time], setting up a final against Paris Saint-Germain.
It’s the first time in 22 years that the final will feature two teams who qualified as domestic league champions.
Lyon wasted a couple of early chances and was then overwhelmed by the clinical Bavarian powerhouse, the competition’s highest-scoring team which was coming off an 8-2 win over Barcelona in the quarterfinals.
Serge Gnabry netted twice before Robert Lewandowski added a later header, giving that duo a combined 24 Champions League goals this season, part of Bayern’s total haul of 42.
PSG as a team only has 25 goals in the competition this season.
“We will look to organize our defense, but we know our biggest strength is putting our opponents under pressure,” Bayern coach Hansi Flick said.
In 35 games since Flick was promoted to manager in November after Niko Kovac’s firing, he won 32 of them to steer Bayern from fourth place in the Bundesliga, to German Cup glory and into a first continental final since lifting the European Cup in 2013.
Sunday’s game at Benfica’s stadium [3am, Macau time] will be the first time since Real Madrid faced Juventus in 1998 that two domestic champions met in the final.
“For now we celebrate a little bit,” Bayern midfielder Alphonso Davies said. “But afterwards we focus on the next game. It’s going to be a good game, there’s going to be goals in it.”
The loss for Lyon, in its first Champions League semifinal in a decade, cuts out the last route back into European competitions next season.
After only finishing seventh in the curtailed Ligue 1 season and being beaten in the French League Cup final by PSG, Lyon will be out of Europe for the first time since the 1996-97 season.
Back on the field where it knocked out Manchester City on Saturday, Lyon was made to pay for the squandering its opportunities to take the lead after finding more space in the Bayern defense than Barcelona, which was thrashed 8-2 on Friday.
“The first couple of minutes we struggled a little bit,” he said. “My goal came at the right time to give us a bit of confidence.”
His threat was evident across the pitch at the Sporting stadium in Lisbon, driving forward with the ball for the move that led to the second goal. After releasing Ivan Perišić on the left wing, the ball was squared into the penalty area. Lewandowski’s sliding connection was blocked by Lopes but Gnabry was on hand to knock in the second in the 33rd.
It extended Gnabry’s hot scoring streak to nine goals across nine games in this season’s pandemic-disrupted Champions League.
Lewandowski never has much trouble scoring, although it took until the 88th minute this time when he rose to meet Joshua Kimmich’s free kick with a header. ROB HARRIS, LISBON, AP