Manuel Neuer Gives Bayern Munich Edge in Arsenal Champions League Tie

Bayern Munich and Arsenal will not face off until February, but looking ahead to their mouthwatering Champions League last 16 tie, it is surely the Bundesliga champions who have the edge.

For all the plaudits the Gunners are earning right now for their football, Carlo Ancelotti's men are capable of playing the game at an equally breathtaking level, and man-for-man, Bayern are the stronger side.

It starts right at the back in—arguably—the most important position of all in a knockout tie: goalkeeper.

While strikers win matches, it is said, goalkeepers win titles, and in Manuel Neuer, Bayern have a bona fide serial hoarder of silverware. The former FC Schalke man's mantlepiece must require hefty annual extensions given the regularity with which Neuer adds to the blinding array of trophies it has to bear.

Neuer very nearly has them all: the World Cup, Champions League, Bundesliga, domestic cups, the latter two categories in duplicate several times over. In short, everything bar a European Championship. Much more than the glory of victory though, the medals reflect the imposing amount of experience the man universally acclaimed as the world's best goalkeeper has accumulated in winning them.

How often do you hear players, coaches and pundits speaking about the utmost, irreplaceable need for experience in the Champions League for those who harbour ambitions of winning it? Hearing that hymn before kick-off, albeit for only six times a season for most of the players who set out on the quest for the Cup with Big Ears, has become a rite of passage for those wishing to be tagged "a top, top player" by countless TV pundits worldwide. Arsene Wenger was at it himself in September before the group stage even started.

"Now I have a team with more experienced players," the Frenchman had said, per Dominic Fifield of the Guardian, hoping desperately that will prove the elusive factor in taking his team through to the last eight of the competition for the first time in seven attempts.

"There are exceptions, obviously, but the majority of the squad is basically between 24 and 30 in age. That’s where you have a good combination of physical strength and experience."

The exceptions, unfortunately for Arsene and Arsenal, include David Ospina. While Neuer played his 87th Champions League game in Bayern's Matchday 6 win over Atletico Madrid and is now just five matches shy of a century of appearances in European competition, Ospina is a mere novice in comparison.

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The Colombia international has only last season and the current campaign to count on as serious, sustained experience at the highest level of European competition. He has made just 12 Champions League appearances in his career so far, and when you consider that, at 28, he is only two years younger than Neuer, he is a featherweight at this level. His international experience, though extensive in South America, does not even scratch the surface of Neuer's on a global scale.

Wenger's idea of playing Ospina in cohabitation with Petr Cech, getting his back-up/future No. 1 invaluable European experience is laudable and understandable. As the Arsenal boss explained, per Chris Wheatley of goal.com: "I have two world-class goalkeepers. I can give them both games. If they do not play, you can't keep two world-class goalkeepers."

But in this sort of tie, particularly given Arsenal's recent, unsuccessful history at this stage of the competition, there is no substitute for experience. And Neuer—massively—has the edge in that area.

It will be all the more vital should the tie come down to the nerve-fraying exercise that is the penalty shootout as little can replace that moment when a goalkeeper can be the hero, an opportunity so few of them get. Neuer has had it, and has earned himself the headlines.

More than experience, Neuer has an aura of invincibility. His reputation forces strikers to make choices they don't want to make, rushes them into decisions—usually bad—while his penalty-stopping record speaks for itself. And what it says is "Wow!"

Neuer has faced 51 penalties in all competitions, 17 of which he has stopped. That's exactly one third of all spot-kicks—quite a ratio in a duel where a goalkeeper has to either second guess or react to a shooter's goal-bound effort in the time it takes a ball to travel 12 yards. It is exactly the same ratio for the nine penalties he has faced in the Champions League—one of the three he has stopped was by Arsenal's Mesut Ozil in the 2013/14 last 16 win over the Gunners. Talk about having a psychological edge!

Neuer has also done it in even bigger games, famously stopping Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka's efforts in the semi-final shootout win over Real Madrid in 2011/12. Sergio Ramos then missed his, whether out of carelessness or having been outpsyched by Neuer, only the Spanish defender can say. Nonetheless, it all adds to the mystique of Neuer as the Elfmetertoter, the penalty killer, as Germans call such goalkeepers.

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Ospina has no such aura. The former Nice man has halted just two of the 32 penalties he has faced in his career and failed to stop the single spot-kick he was challenged with in the Champions League. Indeed, he is only just starting to rebuild his reputation—his Matchday 1 performance in Paris is a good example—after last season's error-peppered European outings.

In light of the massive difference between the two teams in such a key position, you wonder if perhaps Wenger might be regretting being so categorical in imposing a hierarchy among his goalkeepers. Cech, formerly and justifiably known as the world's safest hands before Neuer, has a comparable medal collection to Neuer, and the former Czech Republic No. 1 weighs in with a massive 111 Champions League games.

Is that, and the desire to finally exorcise the demons that have tortured Arsenal at this stage of the competition in seasons past, strong enough for Wenger to consider bringing Cech in for the tie?

Such a decision would cause irreparable damage to his relationship with Ospina, whose confidence in his coach and his own game, would be in tatters. If he doesn't though, Wenger and his men might have to face watching the quarter-finals on TV as Bayern's challenge continues in the safe hands of Neuer. Again.