Conventional wisdom has it that the task facing the two Spanish teams in the semi-finals of the Uefa Champions League is made harder by the fact they are so much more distracted than their rivals.
Unlike Bayern Munich and Juventus, Barcelona and Real Madrid need eyes in the backs of their heads, their weekend dates sharply focused in their wing mirrors, as their domestic seasons reach a climax.
What sort of shape do we need to be in for Valencia this weekend would have been the sort of question Carlo Ancelotti, the Madrid coach, had to ask himself last night, immediately after Madrid’s first leg against Juventus.
RELATED
– Old friends Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique ready to start new rivalry in Champions League
– Pep Guardiola may know Barca, says Leo Messi, but ‘it is 50-50, we both know each other’
His opposite number, Max Allegri, had no such concerns as Juve have already won the Italian scudetto.
On the horizon of Luis Enrique, the Barcelona coach, are three remaining Liga fixtures he must plan to win if Madrid, two points behind Barca in the table, are to be kept at bay.
For Pep Guardiola, Bayern’s coach, no such suspense. Bayern wrapped up their league title in April, making official what has become an annual inevitability, with four games to spare. Bayern had lost just two league fixtures when the latest championship was seized.
Last season Bayern collected the Bundesliga shield on Matchday 27 – with seven games to spare – while in 2012/13 they picked it up a week later. Effectively, between August 2012 and May 2015, Bayern have played half a campaign’s worth of inconsequential league fixtures.
The league that is home to the World Cup-holders, Germany, has become a Bundesbore at its summit, even if its relegation battles are gripping, and draw in once-prestigious clubs such as Hamburg and Stuttgart.
The decline of Borussia Dortmund, genuine rivals to Bayern for three of the past six years, exacerbates the lopsidedness and Bayern have sought the weakening of Dortmund, by luring, in consecutive summers, Dortmund’s leading players.
That will not cease. As Dortmund’s director of football, Michael Zorc, put it, acknowledging midfielder Ilkay Gundogan is tempted to follow the southerly moves taken by Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowksi.
“We don’t like to sell to a direct, German rival, but then this year, in a sporting sense, Bayern haven’t been a rival,” he said. Not when Dortmund sit 36 points behind the big bulls of Bavaria.
Conventional wisdom holds that Bayern’s domestic dominance, these easy Aprils and Mays, should give them advantages when it comes to Champions League semi-finals.
But a case can be made that the lack of weekend stimulus erodes their competitive edge; romp through the local opposition so regularly in third gear and you can lose the habit of switching smoothly and quickly to fourth or fifth.
In the Champions League, in the two years Pep Guardiola has been in charge, Bayern have seemed peculiarly vulnerable to European ambush.
They did wallop Shakhtar Donetsk and Porto at the Allianz Arena by seven and six goals in the past two rounds, but they were less convincing in the away legs. This time last year, they conceded four goals in one leg against Madrid.
On Guardiola’s return to the Nou Camp that was his home, against the Barcelona he left because he was fatigued by the intensity of the club and its consuming, cranky rivalry with Madrid, it is his Bayern who bear more symptoms of weariness, in their long injury list, and not Luis Enrique’s Barca.
The Spanish side appear stimulated by their taut domestic run-in, look fit and fresh.
Guardiola may even envy them the environment that keeps Barca keen.
sports@thenational.ae
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @NatSportUAE
