Shakhtar Donetsk canceled out Bayern Munich's high-powered attack Tuesday night to claim an unexpected 0-0 draw in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League Round of 16 tie.
The return match on March 11 will still see the Bundesliga power heavily favored to advance, but Bayern did not show their usual class against a hard-working Ukrainian side that had not played a competitive contest in two months.
''The main plan for the match was not to lose,'' Shakhtar coach Mircea Lucescu said. ''We've still got a chance.''
The match was played in before a 35,000 sellout crowd in Lviv, which is actually slightly closer to Munich than to politically-troubled Donetsk, where unrest has prevented Shakhtar from using its own home ground. The Shakhtar supporters enjoyed the occasion much more, however, noisily backing their team's fighting performance.
Bayern finished the match with 10 men, seeing Xabi Alonso sent off for two yellow cards in his 100th Champions League match, but even with the extra man Shakhtar could not put real pressure on, settling in the end for a share of the spoils and the chance to head to Munich on level terms next month.
Shakhtar boss Mircea Lucescu will certainly feel better about the outcome given his team's lack of league football since December while Bayern's Josep Guardiola will wonder what happened to the fluid attacking machine that hit eight against Hamburger SV on Saturday.
Bayern had the better of possession and will believe they were only a step or two from breaking on top in the opening half, but Shakhtar shook off any rust to play smart, safe defensive football and deserved the result.
Bayern should have been ahead in just two minutes but Bastian Schweinsteiger snatched at a chip across the goal mouth from Arjen Robben and hooked his shot past the left post. He had more time than he realized and it was impossible to know then what that missed opportunity would mean.
Within the next 10 minutes there was a chance for Robben, who failed to find a ball that fell at his feet some six yards out, and Thomas Mueller, who saw Olexander Kucher clear his tentative shot off the line at the far post. Robben had slipped Mueller in, but the German striker did not get enough behind his attempt to find the far corner.
Shakhtar's counter-attacks were few although Taison was enough of a threat on the left that Bayern had to pay attention to his work. There was a Yaroslav Rakitskiy free kick from long range that forced Manuel Neuer into a save at the second attempt, but there was no real danger in that 25th minute effort, and little else to trouble the German keeper the rest of the way.
Mueller and Ribery were trying to connect up front, but Shakhtar kept the box so tight that the one-two's didn't come off. Robben was usually shadowed by at least two defenders when he tried to make his patented right-to-left moves and when the home team's work rate did not drop after the interval Bayern had no real answer up front.
Shakhtar opened the second half with a much-more attacking attitude, forcing Bayern to do some chasing in midfield while Douglas Costa twice created half-chances with crosses from the right that had to be dealt with in the Munich box. Bayern rode that 15-minutes of some pressure and were back in control of the passing game by the hour mark and created the better of what passed for scoring chances the rest of the way without really looking like getting a goal.
Douglas Costa was somewhat fortunate when he elbowed Franck Ribery, catching the Frenchman in the jaw just after the hour, simply receiving a yellow card when Spanish referee Alberto Mallenco obviously thought the contact was not intentional, though clearly deserving of a warning.
It was Bayern who went down a man in the 65th minute when Xabi Alsono collected his second yellow card for a somewhat soft foul on Alex Texeira. There had been no doubt about his first half card, received when halted Dario Srna to prevent a potential Shakhtar break down the middle.
The sending off forced Guardiola to withdraw an ineffective Mueller and insert central defender Holger Badstuber for the final 20 minutes, hardly what he would have wanted on a night when the attack was clearly out of sync and sputtering badly. He then inserted Robert Lewandowski for the final 15 minutes taking off Mario Goetze, another Bayern attacker who had failed to make an impression on the match.
''We had more chances to score. Shakhtar Donetsk had none, zero,'' Bayern coach Pep Guardiola said. He added that his ''gameplan for today'' had mainly focused on keeping Shakhtar's ''very, very fast'' forwards under control.
''Maybe for the next game in Munich our target, our game, will be completely different,'' Guardiola added.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
