Category World News

Who: Bayern Munich vs. Arsenal
What: Matchday 5, League Phase, UEFA Champions League
Where: Emirates Stadium, North London, England, UK
When: Wednesday at 8pm (20:00 GMT)
How to follow: We’ll have all the build-up on Al Jazeera Sport from 17:00 GMT in advance of our text commentary stream.

In a heavyweight UEFA Champions League (UCL) matchup of the two dominant European megaclubs on Wednesday, English Premier League leaders Arsenal take on German Bundesliga’s Bayern Munich.

Both clubs have perfect records in the League Phase of the competition, and both teams are ranked No 1 and No 2 in the current UCL standings.

Before their top-of-the-table clash at Emirates Stadium, what is all the news?

In the UCL League Phase, who have Arsenal and Bayern Munich currently defeated?

Bayern Munich leads the league standings with four victories and a maximum of 12 points against Chelsea (3-0), Pafos (5-1), Club Brugge (4-4) and, most recently, a victory over Paris Saint-Germain (2-1) at home in France on November 4.

Arsenal leads only their German rival in terms of points and goal difference, with 11 points behind. Athletic Bilbao (2 / 2)), Olympiacos (2 / 2), Atletico Madrid (4 / 4) and Slavia Praha (3 / 3) have all registered victories against them.

Inter Milan is the only team with a perfect 4-0 record in the competition.

Odegaard will face Bayern Munich in a game?

In what would be his first game since suffering a knee injury in early October, Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard has a good chance of starting for Bayern Munich.

The Norwegian midfielder is expected to be in the squad after training on Tuesday afternoon.

Odegaard is being considered for Wednesday’s game, according to manager Mikel Arteta.

For the previous game, “He]Odegaard was very close. We anticipate that he’ll be a part of the squad on Wednesday.

Where did Bayern Munich and Arsenal finish last year’s Champions League?

The Gunners defeated Real Madrid in the quarterfinals (5-1 on aggregate), before falling to Paris Saint-Germain, who had previously reached the Champions League semifinals.

Bayern Munich’s UCL campaign came to an end in the quarterfinals against Inter Milan (4-3 overall).

last five matches form guide

Arsenal: W-W-W-D-W (Premier League, last result)

Bayern Munich: W-W-W-D-W (Bundesliga), last.

Arsenal-Bayern Munich: head-to-head

Bayern Munich won 1-0 (3-2 on aggregate) over Arsenal in the Champions League semifinal on April 17, 2024, making the Germans advance to the last four of the 2023-24 competition with Joshua Kimmich’s 63rd-minute header.

The teams have played each other 14 times, with Bayern dominating the historical contest:

• 8 wins for Bayern Munich
• 3 wins for Arsenal
• Draws 3

news from the Arsenal team

With Kai Havertz (knee) and Viktor Gyokeres (hamstring) both still recovering from injuries, Arsenal will face Bayern without a recognized striker.

Gabriel Jesus will also need to be rested for the Champions League game despite having knee surgery and returning to full fitness.

He arrived sooner than we anticipated, to be fair, and quite close, according to Arteta.

He will have a new step to take with a game that we will arrange for him in the coming days. He will simply be knocking on the door after that.

Possible starting XI for Arsenal

Timber, Saliba, Hincapie, Lewis-Skelly, Eze, Zubimendi, Rice, Saka, Merino, Trossard, and Raya (goalkeeper) are present.

Team news for Bayern Munich

Kimmich, the player who put an end to Arsenal’s last game in 2024, was a question mark at the beginning of the week because of a knock he picked up during the FIFA international break, but is now expected to be back on Wednesday.

Luis Diaz, an explosive winger, is a disciplinary defender for the Arsenal game. Lennart Karl, a rising 17-year-old star, who started for Bayern against Brugge on October 22 and became the club’s youngest champions league scorer in his debut.

Jamal Musiala and Alphonso Davies, who have injuries, won’t be selected for selection.

Harry Kane, who has returned to his native London for this game, will once again lead the charge under the guidance of Bayern manager Vincent Kompany.

Possible starting XI for Bayern Munich:

Neuer (goalkeeper), Laimer, Upamecano, Tah, Guerreiro, Pavlovic, Kimmich, Olise, Karl, Gnabry, Kane, and Laimer

Berlin, Germany – Organisers of a pro-Palestine conference are suing authorities in Berlin who shut the event down last April soon after it began.

They hope a panel of judges at the Berlin Administrative Court will rule that police acted unlawfully in cracking down on the Palestine Congress, a forum of solidarity activists and human rights experts who were gathering to discuss Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Germany’s alleged complicity.

The hearing begins on Wednesday.

The defendant, the State of Berlin, argues the police were right to act preemptively as they predicted criminal statements would be made at the conference, specifically incitement to hatred, dissemination of propaganda or use of symbols of unconstitutional and “terrorist” organisations.

The police justified this prediction in part on the basis that in a news conference held prior to the event, organisers allegedly did not distance themselves from the Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

On the day in question, April 12, 2024, officers in riot gear descended in their hundreds on the venue usually used for wedding receptions and pulled the plug – cutting off the power to ensure that none of the planned speeches could be heard or broadcast via livestream.

“I’m not aware of any other instance where a conference was shut down without any crime having been committed,” Michael Ploese, the lawyer representing the conference organisers, told Al Jazeera.

He said that German law only allowed restrictions on gatherings in private rooms where there was  high probability that a criminal act would be committed, and that the right to freedom of expression usually took precedence.

Among the groups organising the conference was Juedische Stimme (Jewish Voice), a sister group of the US collective of the same name that organises Jewish peace activists who are critical of Israeli actions regarding Palestine.

“I saw it as a success that we had even been able to begin it at all, but I wasn’t expecting it all to end an hour later,” said Wieland Hoban, the chair of Juedische Stimme, who gave opening remarks at the conference.

Adding to the sense of repression, the British Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sittah, one of the main speakers, said officials at the airport in Berlin prevented him from continuing his journey and told him to return to the United Kingdom.

Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek left-wing economist and former minister of finance, posted online the speech he had planned to make. Like Abu Sittah, Varoufakis faced an entry ban after the furore. The Berlin Administrative Court later ruled that the ban on Abu Sittah’s political activity was unlawful.

Throughout Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, German police and security services have repeatedly claimed protests in support of those being bombarded are anti-Semitic or are to be interpreted as revering Hamas. Thousands of individual protesters have been arrested, and many planned demonstrations have been banned outright.

Germany is Israel’s biggest diplomatic supporter in Europe and enforces strict limits on speech that criticises or attacks Israel, with some arguing this is necessary because of Germany’s genocide of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

It is a justification that Wieland Hoban rejects, saying the laws are even used against Jewish people who speak up for Palestine.

“Even if you lost family in the Holocaust, you can still be lectured by some German about what you can say,” said Hoban. “Simply mentioning the Holocaust can get you accused of relativierung” – a word that is used to suggest someone is playing down the Holocaust by drawing comparisons to other, lesser, crimes against humanity.

Last month, a group of United  Nations experts said they were alarmed by the “pattern of police violence and apparent suppression of Palestine solidarity activism by Germany”.

If this week’s case goes in favour of the conference organisers, it will be a blow to Germany’s controversial stance.

Videos of police using force to shut down nonviolent protests for Gaza on the streets of German cities have coursed around the world.

But what marked the state’s intervention in the Palestine Congress apart was that it represented the silencing of an event consisting of talks and debates in an indoor venue – a sphere of political expression that lawyers had previously thought was off-limits for police repression.

The late Pope Francis made a clinic out of the vehicle he used to travel to the Holy Land in 2014. The former Popemobile is intended to treat children in Gaza, but it’s not clear whether Israeli authorities will permit it.

Nearly all of Gaza’s two million people have been forced to live in makeshift tents in displacement camps as a result of Israel’s more than two-year genocidal conflict.

The prospect of severe winter storms and flooding that could cause even these temporary shelters, which can’t withstand harsh conditions, to vanish adds to their suffering.

The weather in Gaza has already gotten worse.

According to Hani Mahmoud, a reporter for Al Jazeera from Gaza City, “over the past 24 hours, we’ve seen strong wind, heavy rainfall, and plummeting temperatures here,” causing many of the displacement areas to become pools of muddy water.

“We have areas that have been completely submerged in water, and areas that have been flooded by heavy rain that also mixed with sewage water, making this area very dangerous for people to live in.”

In an effort to protect the few belongings they have left, families have to use only buckets to scoop muddy water out of their tents and hold them down using simple tools like rocks and blocks.

“Tents are completely destroyed,” he said. Our tents are entirely made of fabric. Our kids are ejecting from the water. No clothing to put on is what Assmaa Fayad, a Palestinian who fled Syria, told Al Jazeera.

Tents in a thousand ruined

At least 13, 000 tents have been damaged by the downpours, according to the UNHCR last week.

According to Mahmoud of Al Jazeera, “Many of these displacement sites are pitched in open areas or the remnants of many of the destroyed buildings here in Gaza.”

These buildings have “they’re cracked in the walls… in the ceilings,” according to Mahmoud, which also makes the living conditions in these buildings challenging.

Aid deliveries were supposed to be significantly increased under a United States-brokered ceasefire, which went into effect on October 10 and was violated by Israel hundreds of times. At least 600 trucks a day are scheduled to enter Gaza to meet the needs of the population.

Since the ceasefire, only an average of 145 trucks have entered Gaza, according to the government media office in Gaza.

In a post on social media, the UNHCR stated that “thousands of internally displaced people are finding safe shelter in the Gaza Strip in preparation for the upcoming cold weather.” More supplies for shelter were still required, the statement continued.

According to aid organizations, at least 300,000 mobile homes and tents are required to house displaced people.

More than 79, 000 displaced people reside in 85 UNRWA-run shelters in the Gaza Strip, according to UNRWA.

“Seiden policy”

As the winter gets closer, the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement condemned the lack of supplies.

“The cold and rainy weather has worsened the suffering of our people in Gaza, particularly the internally displaced.” The Zionist [Israeli] siege policy and the prohibition of the entry of basic necessities cause the flooding of the displaced people’s tents, which also contribute to the silence in the world.

The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement also demanded that the world “take immediate action and press the Zionist enemy to open the crossings and permit the entry of aid and essential supplies.”

The Israeli siege has caused the world’s efforts to help the disaster, according to Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem in a message on Telegram.