With their 2-1 win over Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League thanks to a first half brace from Luis Diaz, Bayern Munich made it 16 wins from as many matches across all competitions to start the 2025/26 season. They’ve already broken the record set by AC Milan back in the 1992/93 season when they started their season with 13 straight wins, and Vincent Kompany’s side showed they could do it against the defending Champions League champions with only 10 men in the second half after Diaz was sent off for his rash challenge that injured Achraf Hakimi.
Bayern is top of the Bundesliga table, top of the Champions League table, and through to the round of 16 of the DFB-Pokal and they have shown no signs of slowing down any time soon. As a bonus, both Jamal Musiala and Alphonso Davies are edging closer to making returns to action after lengthy injury layovers.
However, Bayern is about to face, quite arguably, their toughest test of the season with their next matchup in the Champions League; an away trip to Arsenal on the 26th of the month. Mikel Arteta’s side currently sit at the top of the Premier League table in England and they have won all four of their Champions League matches as well.
Midfielder Joshua Kimmich knows that the trip to the Emirates, despite history leaning in Bayern’s favor in the head-to-heads, will likely be the toughest of the season thus far. “We are first and have Arsenal in the next game. Then we can see once again where we stand,” he explained after the win over PSG in Paris (ESPN UK).
The evidence on display this so far this season, and especially in the first half at the Parc de Princes, does back Bayern to have a more than serious chance of being the first team to get the better of Arsenal in the Champions League, as Kimmich alluded to. “In Paris, especially the first half, we were already outstandingly good. We were incredibly resilient, had many really good chances and were physically very present. I must say, the first-half was one of the most intense halves of my career, of both teams, this constant man-on-man game and in the second half it felt even more intense,” Bayern’s number 6 enthused.
If they can replicate their all around first half performance, not lose a man to a red card, and also stay as defensively organized and resolute as they were in the second half in Paris with only ten men, there’s absolutely no reason why Bayern cannot get past Arsenal. Regardless, it will certainly be one of the marquee matches of the group stages of the competition.
