Treble winners Bayern Munich will be without winger Franck Ribery and goalkeeper Manuel Neuer when they travel to Borussia Dortmund for the Super Cup tonight in a repeat of last season’s Champions League final.
Coach Pep Guardiola, who took over after Jupp Heynckes’s record-breaking season with the Bavarians, said the two players were nursing minor injuries from their friendly 2-0 win over Barcelona this week and would not be fit for the first chance of a trophy this season.
Guardiola also cast doubt on the participation of midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger, who only recently came back from injury.
“Bastian will travel with us but we do not know yet if he can play. He has only a few training sessions under his belt,” the Spaniard told reporters yesterday.
Mario Goetze will also miss the game as he is still recovering from the muscle injury that kept him out of the Champions League final in May.
The two teams have slugged it out in the Bundesliga in the past three seasons with Dortmund winning the 2011 and 2012 editions and Bayern returning to the top last season, when they also added the Champions League trophy and the German Cup.
Bayern beat Dortmund 2-1 thanks to a last-gasp Arjen Robben goal in the Champions League final in London and also eliminated their rivals in the German Cup quarter-finals.
“You have no excuse if you are Bayern Munich coach,” Guardiola said.
“A final is a final and you have no second chances. It is never easy against Dortmund, they play a good game, with a lot of possession. We want to see at what level we are at and plan both for the game and beyond.”
For Dortmund coach Juergen Klopp the early encounter with Bayern has little to do with revenge for the bitter Champions League defeat.
“We do not entertain any thoughts of revenge.We played a great game at Wembley which we could not decide in our favour but from which we learned a lot.
“There is no doubt we will do everything to win this game. It is after all our third straight final but we failed to lift it the past twice,” said Klopp.