Cristiano Ronaldo leads Real Madrid trip to face Bayern Munich but Pepe and Raphael Varane are out

Cristiano Ronaldo

Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane has taken all his 22 first-team available players to travel to Germany ahead of the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals with Bayern Munich on Wednesday night (12 April).

Dani Carvajal has finally made the squad despite missing the Monday's training session so Raphael Varane and Pepe are the only two major absentees due to injuries.

Zidane is expected to make few changes to face Carlo Ancelotti's side after Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema already led the line-up in the weekend's 1-1 draw with Atletico Madrid.

Yet, the derby was expected to be a crucial game in the La Liga title race with Barcelona and the Real

Madrid boss opted to deploy his Gala XI even though Alvaro Morata, Marco Asensio and other fringe players had impressed in the previous 4-2 win over Leganes.

The draw against Diego Simeone's side proved to be positive after Barcelona suffered an unexpected 2-0 defeat at Malaga, leaving Real Madrid three points ahead at the top of La Liga table and with one game in hand.

However, pundits and fans in Spain in recent days have still asked Zidane to rethink his plans to face Bayern and drop one of the members of his attacking BBC trident in order to make space for an extra midfield like Isco in a more balanced 4-4-2 formation.

The Real Madrid boss is expected to ignore this advice as ever since he took over the Champions League winners he has insisted that the BBC will play whenever they are fit.

Yet, the boss will still need to make at least one change in his line-up after Pepe was forced off during the game against Atletico Madrid only minutes after scoring the opener for Real Madrid.

This way Nacho is tipped to take a place in the heart of the back-line as Varane remains on the sidelines following his latest hamstring blow.

Meanwhile, Carvajal's participation in the game came under question on Monday morning after the Spanish international was unavailable to complete the training session with the rest of his teammates. However, the right-back has been included in Zidane's 22-man squad and reports in Spain are suggesting that he won't have problems to start when Real Madrid visit the Allianz Arena on Wednesday night.