The ordeal of the Champions League and Barça

Niklas Suele and Robert Lewandowski, in Bayern training before visiting the Camp Nou.CHRISTOF STACHE / AFP

Kun Agüero was surprised upon his arrival at Barça that the players showed up just half an hour before training began.

Malcom confessed that he worked more at Zenit than at Barcelona.

And Setién replied that he did not have time "to think or to work" when asked about the 2-8 that his team conceded in Lisbon on August 14, 2020 against Bayern.

"I found a changing room that was not happy," signed the coach.

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The Germans meet again 13 months later on the Barça path (Camp Nou, 9:00 pm, Movistar LC) at a time when Koeman announces that his team is "physically very well" after a two-week break.

It is not easy to apply the culture of effort since the departure of the demanding Guardiola and Luis Enrique and the dismissal of optimizer Valverde.

The management of the changing rooms, as well as training sessions and matches, have been conditioned by the hierarchy of the players.

Although the hard core of the captains remains, the change is tried to accelerate out of necessity and obligation. In the absence of Messi, team football and solidarity prevail in order to compete with Bayern. It is not a question of measuring the forces, always more powerful, stronger and faster the Germans, but of avoiding being run over and having the background and sufficient preparation to avoid their transitions and apply the football of position, possession and pressure, the finesse and speed of the ball, signs of distinction from the Cruyff era.

Barcelona fans do not forget the UEFA Cup match that Cruyff's team played in Munich in April 1996. The Catalans drew at two after challenging Bayern Matthäus with a defenseless line-up full of players from the quarry such as Guardiola, Óscar, Celades and later Jordi Cruyff and Iván de la Peña.

Koeman also has a lot of faith in La Masia and faces a delicate match;

the difference is that he was left without strikers and his faith in Cruyff's football model is questioned.

No strikers

Injured Ansu, Dembélé, Agüero and Dest, the fall of Braithwaite, who will have to undergo surgery, leaves the coach with only two forwards: Luuk de Jong, who has not even made his debut, and Memphis, who has seven goals in six games if the obtained with the Netherlands. He has no other alternatives than Demir or Coutinho. The margin of maneuver is scarce for a meeting that will serve to know where the team is, according to Koeman: "You have to have the ball, find the spaces and damage Bayern."

"We have hope and ambition," said Busquets. "We are psyched to start changing and trying to digest the shock that Messi's goodbye caused." The Argentine is one of the four Lisbon starters who is no longer together with Luis Suárez, Semedo and Arturo Vidal. The new ones are the president and the coach while Bayern have replaced Flick by Nagelsmann and no longer have Boateng, Alaba, Thiago and Perisic. The German team, which has beaten Herta and Leipzig, aspires to evolve without losing voracity with Upamecano, Sabitzer, and Musiala, and Barça intends to break the defeatist inertia with Koeman.

The ordeal has not stopped since the conquest of Berlin in 2015. Atlético, Juve, Roma, Liverpool, Bayern and PSG have beaten Barça.

There has been no more ruthless team than Bayern.

He has had no mercy in moments of weakness: neither in 2013 (4-0 and 0-3) nor in 2020, only defeated twice out of 11, once in 2009 under Guardiola and the second in 2015 with Luis Enrique.

The revenge has not stopped since then to the derision of a Barça that, given the impossibility of exchanging blows and following their rhythm, aspires to show that at least things have changed at the Camp Nou since the days of Malcom and Setién.

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