Bayern Munich settle for boring, ugly, scrappy scoreless draw with Shakhtar Donetsk

Bayern Munich traveled to the Ukraine and played one hell of an ugly game against Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League. The two teams scratched and clawed for ninety minutes before the referee mercifully blew his whistle to end the match in a scoreless draw.

Arjen Robben set up Bayern's two best opportunities in the first ten minutes. Early on in the match, he found Bastian Schweinsteiger standing at the top of the penalty area. Schweinsteiger's attempted side volley went just wide of the post. A few minutes later, Robben laid the ball off to Thomas Müller, and his cut back pass rolled across the face of goal without a Bayern player near. Donetsk was forced to clear the ball away for a corner.

The match began to get testy after the first twenty minutes with referee handing out yellow cards among a lot of pushing and shoving from the two teams. The feisty behavior from the two teams would continue through the first half.

Bayern had another opportunity to score in the 31st minute. A deflected pass ended up in the air before Müller headed it down into the path of Franck Ribery. The Frenchman's pass back to him was just a bit too hard, and Müller stretched for the ball, only to sky the shot.

In the final minutes of the first half, Bayern had another shot from Ribery after some intricate passing at the top of the penalty area, but his shot was well off the mark. Shakhtar's game plan was to sit back an absorb as much pressure as possible without conceding a goal, and they succeeded in the first half.

Müller had a great opportunity to open the scoring at the start of the second half. Bayern earned a corner kick, and Müller found himself all alone at the top of the six yard box with a wide open header. He put his effort over the crossbar. However, the referee did call a foul against Bayern, so it would've have mattered if Müller scored or not.

In the 58th minute, Douglas Costa was shown a yellow card for throwing an elbow into Ribery's face. The foul was easily deserving of a red card and was basically the third or fourth yellow that he should've been shown. It also happened shortly after Costa kicked the ball at Ribery while he was on the ground and wasn't punished.

Xabi Alonso was shown a second yellow card in the 65th minute for a slight tug on Alex Teixeira who flung himself to the ground. The decision does look laughable considering it occurred only minutes after Douglas Costa committed two bookable offenses minutes apart.

The match slowly came to an end with neither side really accomplishing much on the night. Bayern still have the upper hand heading back to the Allianz Arena on March 11. Hopefully, that match won't be as awful to watch as this one.