Luis Enrique and Pep Guardiola are primed to lock horns in the dugout for the first time.
The Barcelona vs Bayern tie pits two close friends against one another, two former players who were steeped in the Barça philosophy – one as a La Masia youth product and the other as a star signing who retired at the club. They were teammates in the Spain under-23 side that claimed gold at the 1992 Olympics (staged in none other than Barcelona) and went on to share a dressing room for La Roja and the Azulgranas alike.
Another common denominator between the duo is that both showed they had the makings of a manager during their illustrious playing careers. In the words of Charly Rexach, who worked with the pair at the Camp Nou, “It was easy to guess that they’d both become coaches in the future. They were two inquisitive players. The team talk was never enough for them. They’d always come over and ask you what they had to do, how they should react to the movements they expected from the opposition”.
Time has proven Rexach right. As soon as they hung up their boots, Pep and Luis Enrique’s thoughts turned to coaching. As fate would have it, both cut their teeth with Barça B, where they tasted their first success on the touchline.
Guardiola completed his apprenticeship by doing the rounds in the muddy climes of the Catalan group of the Spanish fourth tier (Tercera División), leading his side up to the third division (Segunda B) at the first time of asking before being given the senior job. Luis Enrique took up the mantle and picked up where Pep had left off, earning promotion to the second flight (Segunda) and guiding Barcelona’s reserves to their highest ever finish at that level.
The pair’s paths forked when Luis Enrique embarked on his ill-fated Italian adventure with Roma but, after a spell with Celta, he landed back at Barcelona – as if by destiny, in the very year in which Guardiola’s Bayern take on the ‘Azulgranas’ in Europe.
