We look ahead to Tuesday’s UEFA Champions League quarter-final first leg at Allianz Arena with our Bayern Munich vs Inter prediction and preview. Will Harry Kane and co take a lead over to Milan for the return leg?
Bayern Munich vs Inter Stats: The Key Insights
The Opta supercomputer makes Bayern Munich the favourites to take a first-leg lead, giving them a 47% win probability, though Inter are marginal favourites to advance to the semis (51.5%).
Inter have kept a clean sheet in eight of their 10 matches in the UEFA Champions League this season.
Bayern are unbeaten across their last 22 home matches in the Champions League.
They may have surrendered the Bundesliga title to Bayer Leverkusen last season, but in truth, being crowned champions of Germany is the absolute bare minimum expected of a Bayern Munich manager, and Vincent Kompany will ultimately be judged on his ability to deliver a UEFA Champions League trophy.
To do so, he will have to overcome an Internazionale side unbeaten in 10 games in all competitions, and under the tutelage of Simone Inzaghi, one that has come to be considered one of the best sides in Europe.
Indeed, this looks to be an incredibly evenly-matched encounter, with Bayern currently ranked as the seventh best team in the world according to the Opta Power Rankings, and Inter two places ahead in fifth.
Bayern will be afforded an extra day of rest in preparation for this encounter, having beaten Augsburg 3-1 on Friday, with Harry Kane and Jamal Musiala on the scoresheet to maintain their six-point lead at the top of the Bundesliga.
Inter, meanwhile, relinquished a two-goal lead away to Parma on Saturday, ultimately dropping two points in their battle for Serie A supremacy.
Bayern will need to take full advantage of their Allianz Arena dominance if they’re to get past a sturdy Inter; the Rekordmeister haven’t lost at home in the Champions League since April 2021 when they faced Paris Saint-Germain in the quarter-finals, boasting a run of 22 games without defeat since, with 17 wins and five draws.
Winning necessitates scoring, though, and that’s far from a guarantee against Inter, who have conceded only two goals in 10 matches in Europe’s premier competition this term.
This puts the Italians in historic territory – of teams to have played 10 or more matches in a single European Cup or Champions League campaign, Inter’s clean sheet percentage (80%) in 2024-25 is the highest of any side in a single season (8 clean sheets in 10 matches).
One method of overcoming Inter’s defensive excellence is in the luxury of owning one of the greatest strikers in a generation in Kane.
Kane has participated in 55 games in total in the Champions League and has directly contributed to a remarkable 50 goals in the competition across those appearances, scoring 39 times while supplying an additional 11 assists.
During this season alone the Englishman has more goal involvements than games played in the competition, with 10 goals and two assists in 11 games.
In accompaniment will be Michael Olise, who has assisted Kane in each of Bayern’s last two matches, with four assists in his last three appearances overall for club and country.
Kane and Olise form part of a Bayern frontline that doesn’t make it easy for opposition defences to build attacks against. This is evidenced by Bayern’s per-game average of 122 high-intensity pressures in the final third in the Champions League this campaign, a competition high in 2024-25.
Indeed, they are forcing just short of 13 high turnovers per game in the Champions League, a number that was last surpassed by Bayern themselves in the 2021-22 campaign.
Inter have threats of their own, chiefly in the form of club captain Lautaro Martínez, who has netted six times in the Champions League this term at a rate of 80 minutes per goal. The last player to exceed that total in a single season for the club in this competition was Samuel Eto’o back in 2010-11, with eight goals. Eto’o’s final goal of that campaign came away to Bayern in the round of 16.
Another potential avenue of danger comes from wand-footed wing-back Federico Dimarco, who has been directly involved in 11 goals in all competitions this season for Inter, with four goals and seven assists.
Alas, Dimarco will be without his partner in crime on the right flank, with the marauding Denzel Dumfries still unavailable due to a muscle injury.
But it’s Bayern who will have to maximise their squad depth in this instance, owing to a host of injuries to first team players.
Manuel Neuer, Dayot Upamecano and Alphonso Davies remain sidelined, while Musiala has been officially ruled out after suffering a hamstring tear in Friday’s win at Augsburg.
Musiala’s absence could result in a start for 35-year-old Thomas Müller, who announced on Saturday that this will be his final season with Bayern after spending 25 years with the club. Muller is three goals shy of the 250-mark in Bayern colours and excels during the meatier rounds of this competition, ranking sixth all-time for Champions League knockout-stage goals with 27 strikes.
Bayern Munich vs Inter Head-to-Head
Bayern have won five of the nine encounters between these two sides in European competition, with three wins for Inter and one draw.
Inter, though, have eliminated Bayern on each of the two occasions they have faced off in the knockout stages of this competition; 2-0 in the 2009-10 final, and progressing on away goals over two legs in 2010-11 in the last 16.
Bayern Munich vs Inter Prediction
While Inter are favoured ever so slightly to progress over the two legs (51.5%), Bayern are deemed favourites to win this first leg on home soil, according to the Opta supercomputer.
Bayern came out on top in 47.0% of 10,000 simulations, while Inter triumphed in 27.3%. The chance of a draw sits at 25.7%.
Bayern Munich vs Inter Predicted Lineups
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off on Tuesday, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
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