La Liga's Real Madrid and Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich will renew their rivalry in the first leg of the Champions League semifinal on Wednesday.

The two sides met up in the Champions League semifinals back in 2011-12 when Munich eliminated Madrid on penalties before losing against Chelsea of the English Premier League (EPL) in the same manner. Munich is the defending champion and is the favorite heading into the seminfinals. Madrid, however, is hard to write off completely.

How they got here
Munich was drawn into a group that included EPL's Manchester City, Viktoria Plzen of the Czech Republic's Gambrinus Liga and CSKA Moscow of the Russian Premier League. The team finished the group stage with five wins and one loss; the lone defeat came at home against Manchester City in the final group game.

In the round of 16, the team took on EPL's Arsenal and won the away leg 2-0. At home the Bavarian side was stopped in a 1-1 draw. In the quarterfinals, Munich seemingly drew an "easy" opponent in EPL's Manchester United but was outplayed in a 1-1 draw in the first leg. However at home the team managed to take control of the game with a 3-1 win.

Real Madrid dominated a group that included Serie A's Juventus, Turkish Süper Lig champion Galatasaray and Danish Superliga's Copenhagen. In the round of 16 the team dominated Bundesliga's Schalke over two legs by scoring nine goals and conceding only two. The team then took on Borussia Dortmund - last year's Champions League finalist -- and won 3-0 at home. However, the second leg featured a mediocre performance from Los Blancos in which they lost 2-0 and nearly blew the 3-0 lead.

Top Players
Cristiano Ronaldo has 14 goals in the tournament but is a game-time decision for the first leg. In his wake, Madrid is hoping that the team plays the way it did against Barcelona in the Copa del Rey last week. In that match, the team played a perfect counter attack led by the likes of Angel Di Maria and Isco. Gareth Bale stepped up his play tremendously in that game and created a plethora of scoring chances before scoring a wondrous winner. Bale will need to step up his play in a similar fashion if this team has any hopes of topping the defending champions. Madrid has plenty of top stars on the roster, but will need Bale to be the main man as he was against Barcelona.

Munich is also a collection of superstars that can contribute at a moment's notice. Various players have stepped up at different moments in the knockout rounds of the tournament for Munich. Toni Kroos dominated Arsenal in the opening leg before Arjen Robben and Frank Ribery took down Manchester United in the second leg. Who will be Bayern's hero against Madrid in this series?

Prediction: It is hard to predict how this game will ultimately turn out but it would seem that Madrid playing at home would have some bearing on the outcome. Look for Los Blancos to manage a 2-1 win over Munich on its home turf.

The match kicks off at 2:45 p.m. EDT and can bee seen on Fox Sports 1 and Fox Deportes. Live stream coverage can be seen on FOX Soccer 2GO.