Tuchel hopeful as Bayern look for miracle in Munich

Thomas Tuchel remains hopeful that Bayern Munich can overcome the 3-0 deficit inflicted on them by Manchester City in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals.

The Bavarians fell short of expectations at the Etihad and were punished by a rampant City side who are looking to finally achieve success in Europe's top competition.

Rodri's stunning strike gave Pep Guardiola's men the lead after 27 minutes before goals from Bernardo Silva and Erling Haaland wrapped up a successful night for the Premier League champions.

But the damning defeat was not enough to deter Tuchel from the task at hand.

He said: "I try to not allow my players to focus on the result because it does not tell the story of this match. 

"That will be the challenge, to focus on the things we did good, we played with the right attitude and a lot of quality.

"In the second half we had the chance to shift the momentum completely but did not get the reward from the effort. 

"The reaction [to the goal] was great, a goal could have given us a huge boost but the opposite happened, now everyone is disappointed and the players felt that this does not feel like a 3-0.

"But it is and it is a huge task to turn this around and we will not give up."

Making amends

The Bundesliga outfit have a mammoth task on their hands if they are to produce a historic comeback against the 2021 finalists.

Tuchel did not shy away from singling out players — including Dayot Upamecano, who was at fault for City's second goal — but insisted that there were positives that his players could take from the match.

He explained: "There were no big weaknesses, we conceded from outside of the box, this can happen, the second goal shifted the momentum.

"It was an individual mistake from bad decision making [that cost us], at this level we got punished.

"This is the highest level in world football, nobody is mad at him [Upemacano] but this is a mistake that should not happen at this level.

"No big things need to change but you also need luck and the momentum to beat City, we did not get rewarded when we were good."