Pep Guardiola's Two Champions League Teams

Pep Guardiola cracked up a bit during his press conference on Tuesday. This is significant insofar as this is not a thing that happens. Pep saves his rawest candor for the locker room and the fourth official's poor eardrums. He doesn't lay himself bare in public except when he's dancing in the technical area, motioning frantically for Phillip Lahm to push higher in attack, or, erm, aggressively mocking his (now-departed) medical staff. As managers go, Pep isn't particularly bland or guarded when addressing the media—he can in fact be quite thoughtful, if he's in the right sort of mood—but he's always projecting togetherness. He's an impeccably painted stone wall that has developed the capacity to deliver comments about Arjen Robben's fitness.

The answer during which Guardiola paused twice to gather himself wasn't an interesting one. He admitted that being back at the Nou Camp as an opponent, facing the club he grew up in, starred for, and later managed to something like 193 trophies over four years, is a bit strange, but obviously, he has a job to do, and he's going to try as hard as he can to beat Barcelona, to put Bayern Munich into the Champions League final. He didn't use the word "emotional," but for a few fleeting moments, he wore it on his face. That's probably as much as Pep's going to give us. This must be tough for him, but there's no strategic advantage in saying as much, so it won't be said.

If Barcelona haven't completely moved on from Guardiola—neither Luis Enrique nor Tata Martino have commanded the squad the way their predecessor did—they have at least moved forward. The style they employ now isn't as different from tiki-taka as it has been made out to be, but it's definitely more vertical, in the sense that Spaniards use that word, which is to say Barça play with more obvious purpose than they once did. Where Pep's teams were almost philosophical in their willingness to knock the ball around patiently, confident that a route to goal would reveal itself eventually so long as they kept pondering and probing, Enrique's Barcelona are detectives, thorough and thoughtful, but also urgent and very willing to kick down a few doors if that's what needs doing. Pedro's pianissimo brilliance has been replaced by Neymar's thrilling anti-subtlety; the tactical position once reserved for false nines is now occupied by a famous cannibal. Barça are far from unrecognizable, but they're no longer fashioned in Guardiola's image.

Neither, for that matter, are Bayern. There's grousing every month or so from some former club legend or another, who bemoans the team's possession obsession—this time, it's Stefan Effenberg—but the detractors fail to appreciate that these Bayern squads are far less art project-ish than Barcelona at their fussily idealistic, Cesc-Fàbregas-in-the-front-line peak. While Pep didn't leave his pretensions toward his version of perfect soccer behind when he left Catalonia, he at least became a whit more pragmatic.

Bayern are not built like circa 2010 Barcelona, and so they don't play that way. They keep the ball, and they're offensive-minded perhaps to a fault, but the machinery hums at a unique pitch. It's not that the irregular violence of Robben, Franck Ribery, and Thomas Muller's games can't be contained by Guardiola's methods; it's that his methods encourage that violence, and order it in such a way that it's rendered as effective as it's ever been. Bayern play like a buzzsaw these days, which is a function of their talent. The precision with which they cut is Pep's doing. In Munich, he's more of a facilitator than a visionary.

It's been a little over two years since Guardiola coached his last match at the Nou Camp. It's slightly silly that he's the focal point of this tie, because, as he's said in so many words over the years, managers only matter so much. But besides the simultaneously rote and poignant A Man Comes Home storyline, his return illuminates how much has changed and how much hasn't, while adding a dose of weirdness to the proceedings.

Guardiola is at Bayern, but will forever be connected to Barcelona. Both teams bear his imprint, but only sort of. The stadium is likely to give him an ovation, then seat themselves and root for Pep's squad to lose 5-0. It'll be like watching the ocean greet a great ship, then try to capsize it. The action on the pitch, as ever, will be the most captivating aspect, but everything that happens will be reflected through the bald, besuited man standing on the sideline. This match is about Pep, and he knows it, no matter how much he lets on.