Barca-Bayern Storylines Give Spice To Matchup

It didn’t send boots aquak­ing in Catalunya, but it is a team to respect based on their prece­dent. If there is one demon they will have to over­come in order to get to that his­toric tre­ble, they will have to do so against a side that they have never beaten.

Never Beaten Bayern

In four matches against the Bavar­ian giants, the Blau­grana do not know what vic­tory feels like. Bay­ern defeated Barcelona in the semis of the UEFA Cup, and the Ger­mans would come out on top with a 4–3 aggre­gate en route to becom­ing the first Ger­man team to raise all three Euro­pean tro­phies back in 1996. They would meet again in the group stages of the Cham­pi­ons League two years later and it would be Bay­ern that would get the best of them win­ning both games of the group stages as they would be a minute away from the Cham­pi­ons League title if it weren’t for an epic come­back by Man­ches­ter United.

Two Old Friends Meet Again

Ear­lier this decade, Josep Guardi­ola left a Barca side to head and have a fresh start over in Bres­cia. He became yet one more exam­ple of the rela­tion­ship between the Blau­grana and their idols. When he got there as one of the big acqui­si­tions of the sum­mer. It was a team that had the poten­tial to do some dam­age, but in the end it was Guardi­ola that suf­fered the most. The club ended up in 14th place, and the high­light of the sea­son was they ended up as Inter­toto Cup runners-up. That team was one full of studs. Andrea Pirlo, a rarely avail­able Guardi­ola, Anto­nio Fil­ip­pini, Daniele Bon­era, Igli Tare, and the man that put Bres­cia in the epi­cen­ter of Ital­ian foot­ball– Roberto Bag­gio. He was the talk in 2002 as to whether he was going to be part of Gio­vanni Trappatoni’s side. But there was a young player that played two sea­sons on this Bres­cia side. In 44 matches, he scored 15 goals and he started to grab the atten­tion of the Ital­ian foot­ball scene.

Luca Toni would then move to Palermo where he would become capo can­non­iere on a side that he would help bring back to Serie A. He once again proved his goalscor­ing prowess with the rosanero scor­ing 50 goals in 80 matches and lead­ing them to a spot in the UEFA Cup in only their first sea­son in the Ital­ian top flight.

MvB Returns To The Nou Camp

Mark Van Bom­mel will make his return to Barcelona after his depar­ture three sea­sons ago. The fiery Dutch mid­fielder. “It is very excit­ing to be able to play again in Barcelona. It will be the first time that I have been back. The fact that I will be return­ing to what was my home for a year is very spe­cial,” he added.

It is obvi­ous that there is a huge moun­tain to climb, but to be hon­est it gets steeper the closer Rome gets. The win­ner of this matchup will end up play­ing the win­ner of Liverpool-Chelsea. There is no two ways about it, there is no doubt that Barcelona are in the tough­est part of their sched­ule and the mar­gin for error has reduced expo­nen­tially. Despite all of this, the sub­plots as well as the poten­tial play on the pitch will make this prob­a­bly one of the most excit­ing ties of the quar­ter­fi­nals. It could be even more excit­ing than Chelsea-Liverpool from a tac­ti­cal perspective.

Tagged as: barcelona, bayern munich, brescia, Champions League, cup, josep guardiola, luca toni, mark van bommel, roberto baggio, uefa