Bayern tests Villarreal's armor

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Albiol and Lewandowski, in a fight at La Cerámica in the first leg of the Champions quarterfinals.CHRISTOF STACHE (AFP)

Giuseppe Bergomi, Trapattoni's Inter bulwark who won two UEFA Cups in the golden age of Italian football, was one more in the crowd of countrymen who marveled at the "tacticism" with which Unai Emery thwarted his counterpart Massimiliano Allegri in the knockout stages of the Champions League against Juventus.

Visiting La Cerámica to attend the 1-0 first leg of the quarter-final against Bayern last week, veteran central defender

corroborated his impression: “Emery would be an excellent coach for Serie A!”

Like who doesn't want the thing, the yellow submarine has been transformed into an amphibious vehicle, if not a bus.

The color of Villarreal's uniform has not changed.

But the character, behavior and style of the team that Emery will lead this Tuesday against Bayern at the Allianz Arena (9:00 p.m., Movistar Champions League) bear little resemblance to the one that reached the semifinals of the Champions League in 2006.

“I was a bit surprised by how low they defended,” Julian Nagelsmann, the Bavarian coach, observed on Monday, evoking the 1-0 first leg.

“In the League they don't defend that far back.

In the Champions, yes.

Against Juve they lowered the defense a lot too.

What I didn't expect from a Spanish team is that they were so physical, so intense, so firm in the air and in duels”.

If at times Villarreal survived under the table in the bombardment of La Cerámica —22 shots from Bayern to 12 from the local team—, in Munich the rain threatens to unload the triple.

At the rear led by Pau Torres and Raúl Albiol, the worst opponent awaits in the most inhospitable of scenarios.

With two Champions League titles, four finals and four semi-finals, since 2010 the ball control ratios and chances generated indicate that Bayern has been the team that has competed most regularly in excellence.

Win or lose, he always showed unavoidable rigor and efficiency.

Until he ran into Emery's bus.

The 1-0 first leg was something extraordinary.

It was not only Bayern's first defeat this season in the Champions League.

It was the first loss suffered by the German team away from home in 22 games, and was the result of the unusual breakdown of their pressing lines and creative circuits.

Enough to cause a sting in the offices and locker rooms on Säbener Strasse, where the dissonances that have existed for months between the squad and the coach are beginning to surface over the difficulties.

“We are not in crisis!” Neuer proclaimed, before anyone hinted at any crisis, this Monday at the pre-match conference.

“We all understand each other perfectly!”

Together in attack and defense

It is ironic that Bayern, historically linked to rocky defenses since Beckenbauer became a

, are destabilized by contact with Villarreal because they could not score a single goal.

A team with a happy tradition, a perfect representative of the elaborate and daring football that has characterized the Spanish school in the present century, Villarreal is undergoing a mutation that moves its barycentre to the rear axis, even forming a clearly conservative 4-4-2, like on the way

“This team grew as it adapted to what the rivals demanded of it since progressing to the Europa League final last season,” explains Emery.

"In that process we found rivals at a higher collective and individual level who demanded a lot from us and in a different way".

“We see it in the most successful coaches,” Emery noted, “competitive teams today are the ones that play together on offense and defense.

The best way to be competitive with the resources you have is to be compact, and this Villarreal has grown in that".

The Villarreal coach seemed to evoke Thomas Tuchel, the last Champions champion colleague, famous for giving up offensive ingenuity to fortify himself with five defenders and a book double pivot.

Nothing that was strange to Villarreal in the first leg against Bayern, reinforced on the wings with Coquelin and Lo Celso, two midfielders used to defending, and with Parejo and Capoue in the double pivot, to the detriment of more agile players in attack like Pino, Chukwueze, Trigueros or Pedraza.

“We have to face it naturally”, warned Emery, about the match that awaits his men in Germany, “in the sense of knowing that at times we will defend very close together, very low, very close to our area against many rivals who will attack us.

We have to try to make all of this something predictable for us and to also be able to get positions on the field to be able to move and gain space with the ball”.

The counterattacking formula has yielded few benefits in the league, where it is seventh.

In the last month, Villarreal have not been able to overcome weaker rivals, such as Cádiz, Levante, Osasuna or Athletic.

But in the Champions League, against big teams and forced by history and the hierarchy of players, it has generated confusion.

“They are going to defend themselves as they did against Juventus and against us in the first leg,” Nagelsmann anticipated.

“We have to be more ambitious and put more pressure on them.

We need to be more intense, with and without the ball, to prevent them from playing against people like Pau Torres, who has a very good foot”.

Villarreal is one step away from reaching the second semi-final in its history.

He has a goal advantage and goes to Munich to protect himself from the Bavarian charge with his new armor.

If Bayern do not overcome their doubts, fate will be in the hands of the resistant visitors.

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