Barcelona is the club Ronaldo Koeman wanted to coach for at least half a lifetime. It is the club Mauricio Pochettino has said he would never happily work for.
Pochettino loves the city, has a home there, but his long past with Espanyol, as player and manager, means a part of him will always draw up to Camp Nou and instinctively see a rival.
That was problematic when Barcelona, in crisis, considered Pochettino as a candidate for the manager’s job last year.
They asked Koeman, their ex-player, last January and then, successfully, in August. In the way elite football always ties up the threads of history sooner or later, Koeman’s Barcelona, a work in progress, meet Pochettino’s Paris Saint-Germain, a very new project, in the Champions League.
There is no personal enmity between these two managers. In fact, they share one close professional bond – a fondness for Southampton, the English club where they both gained great respect.
Pochettino’s coaching career took off at Southampton, from where he was poached by Tottenham Hotspur. Koeman succeeded him at Saints – and results stepped up a notch, so much that Everton poached Koeman, who never made it secret that the main target of his long, varied career was to be in charge at Barca.
To serve their current employers ahead of Tuesday's match, they are obliged to bare their teeth. Barcelona versus PSG is both the glamour tie of this season's last-16, and one that crackles with tension, from boardroom down.
On the one side, the traditional heavyweight, with five European Cups to its name, but in decline. On the other, a club transformed by sudden, vast investment over the last decade, and fresh from the first Champions League final of its history.
The relationship is frosty, partly because of Barcelona’s regular past attempts to poach players – Thiago Silva, Marquinhos, Angel Di Maria, Marco Verratti – from Paris advertising prestige over ‘new’ money.
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Gallery: PSG 2 Nice 1
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PSG answered back by poaching a megastar, Neymar, from Barca, triggering his massive buyout clause of €222 million ($269.7m) in 2017 and the Brazilian agreeing to become the French club’s figurehead. Neymar and Di Maria are injured for Tuesday night, which Barcelona can only view as a positive.
The latest shadow-boxing has been over Messi, whose contract with Barcelona expires in June. PSG believe they can offer the six-time Ballon D’Or winner the best arguments, financially and professionally, to leave the club of his lifetime for a new adventure in his mid-30s.
They have not kept the ambition quiet, with PSG players regularly airing their invitations to Messi to join, French publications mocking up Messi in a PSG jersey.
Pochettino has said he would, naturally, welcome Messi, and defended his players saying publicly they would too. Koeman was expecting more on the subject on Monday when he insisted, firmly: “Messi is a Barcelona player and we have great hopes he will continue to be a Barcelona player.” He is, as Koeman never tires of saying, “the best in the world.”
He is in form, too, as decisive as any time under Koeman, and showing more joie de vivre than at any time since he asked to leave Barcelona, without success, in the summer. In Saturday's 5-1 win over Alaves, he struck his 18th and 19th goals of the season, his sixth and seventh in five La Liga matches.
Koeman’s achievement has been to restore Messi’s smile and perhaps encourage a captain downhearted by Barcelona’s slipping standards to glimpse a brighter future at Camp Nou.
It is there in Pedri, the 18-year-old with whom 33-year-old Messi has established a fruitful connection. At the weekend, Messi played commander to a midfield that, at various times, featured five players between the ages of 18 and 23.
It is what lines up behind midfield that concerns Koeman. His Barcelona have been leaky and often threadbare in the centre of defence. To correct that, the vice-captain Gerard Pique, out injured since November, has accelerated his recuperation to play against PSG. His fitness is touch and go. “We have a good feeling about Gerard,” said Koeman, “but we will decide the morning of the game.”
Koeman was candid about why Barca need their best at the back. A PSG without Neymar, or Di Maria, still have their greased lightning, Kylian Mbappe.
“Mbappe and his speed are something you have to control," acknowledged Koeman. "We have to make sure we are organised when we lose the ball. It will be a determining factor. But this is not just a duel between Messi and Mbappe.”
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Gallery: Neymar to miss Barca return due to injury
