Guardiola Insists: Bayern Ready To Push Through Spain Barrier

Spanish sides foiled Bayern in their last two UEFA Champions League semi-finals, but UEFA.com's Philip Röber feels Josep Guardiola can break that spell.

The UEFA Champions League final is in Milan and Bayern München are up against a Madrid club in the semi-finals – exactly the situation the Bavarians faced in 2001, and that did not turn out so badly.

However, defeats by Spanish opponents in successive semi-finals have given Josep Guardiola's side cause for trepidation, and they go into their first leg against Atlético having won only two of their last 12 games on Spanish soil.

Statistics may not tell the whole story, though. Those losses – to Real Madrid in 2014 and Barcelona last time out – were perhaps rooted in Bayern's injury problems at the time, and in both cases their opponents had the greater motivation, having won the UEFA Champions League less recently than the German champions.

Racist insult: Fans hurled bananas at AC Milan's Constant

Fans hurled bananas at AC Milan's Guinean defender Kevin Constant on Sunday as his side's Europa League bid suffered a huge knock in a 2-1 defeat to Atalanta. The racist insult was the latest to hit a top European football league after a banana was thrown at Barcelona's Brazilian defender Dani Alves on 27 April.

European football's governing body UEFA this week blasted racist attacks in Spain and called for action after fans subjected foreign players to monkey taunts and banana-throwing.

Alves calmly picked up the banana hurled at him by a Villareal fan and bit a chunk out of it. But there was many protests by black players after the game. Milan travelled to Bergamo looking to build on the 1-0 derby win over Inter last week that put them firmly in contention for a place in the Europa League.