Tonight’s Champions League Final could be won in the technical area.
Jose Mourinho and Louis van Gaal are accomplished tacticians who will not be bored by sixty minutes of cat-and-mouse.
Both can think on their feet and change a game – and then change it again. Both have the balls to yank a player off after 25 minutes if he’s not playing to instructions.
Be sure of one thing : Jose Mourinho has a plan for Arjen Robben.
He coached the Dutch ace at Chelsea and will have a plan to stop Robben.
He had a plan to stop Messi and that worked, and if he can stop Messi, he can stop Robben. Compared to Messi, Arjen Robben is a power player. He makes many of his own goals by his pace and his thunderous shooting. Messi is a finesse player, not a power player. His preposterous touches and dribbles and shots are made hypnotic by the uncanny balance, sublime touch and superhuman timing that allows him to win games from tiny spaces.
Where will the game be won and lost?
If it’s not won in the technical area, then it will be won in the penalty box, where Bayern’s centrebacks Demichelis and Van Buyten are inferior to South American monsters Lucio and Samuel.
Samuel Eto’o scored against Arsenal in the 2006 final when Eboue didn’t realise Eto’o was behind him. In 2009 he cut inside Vidic and fired inside Van Der Saar’s near post to set Pep Guardiola’s team on the way to a 2-0 victory.
If the electric Eto’o scores tonight he will become the first player to score in three Champions League Finals.
Having said all that, the key player is more likely to be Wesley Sneijder. How soon will he get forward? Will it be a chess match for an hour? A cagey sparring session where crafty old boxers pepper each other’s elbows with punches that don’t hurt too much.
A lot will depend on how often Sneijder gets away from van Bommel and Schweinsteiger and moves into the game-changing zone. Sneijder is the brainiest player on either side and can score from 25 yards with both feet. He sees killer passes too.
Croatian Ivica Olic has been keeping Klose and Gomez out of the team. A master at pinching half a yard, he deceives the keeper before he shoots. Olic doesn’t hit the ball at the obvious moment and that’s a high art.
Remember that this is Louis van Gaal’s first season at Bayern Munich. He had a rocky start and would have been sacked in November if they had not beaten Juventus on Matchday 6.
Neither team has had an easy run to the final. Inter began in what was BY FAR the strongest group in the competition. After six games, Group F ended with Barcelona on 11 points, Inter on 9, Rubin Kazan on 6 and Dynamo Kiev on 5. It was always likely that Inter and Barca would meet again in the knockout stages.
Bayern have won four European Cups and Inter two.
Bayern’s triumphs were in 1974, 1975 and 1976, and again in 2001.
Inter’s were almost fifty years ago! They won in 1964 and 1965 but lost to Celtic’s Lisbon Lions in 1967.
Former Arsenal groundsman Paul Burgess now works at the Bernabeu and says the pitch is more like Highbury than the Emirates.