Heavyweight clash gives Zinedine Zidane chance to get the better of former nemesis (2024)

When Bayern Munich meet Real Madrid in tonight’s semi-final first leg it will be the 25th time that the teams have faced each other in Europe’s premier competition and it is hard to avoid the mental image of two supertankers on a collision course; not just because they are huge, looming presences, but because in some ways they are slow-moving as well.

Real will probably line up with nine of the team that started the 2016 final, with only Isco replacing Gareth Bale and Raphaël Varane instead of Pepe; while Bayern look likely to start four of the front six who started the 2013 final, in Arjen Robben, Thomas Müller, Franck Ribéry and Javi Martínez.

Real and Bayern are heavyweights who have in common a very particular recipe for success: stellar, vastly experienced squads under low-key, pragmatic coaches whose tactical blueprint is hard to discern and whose real strength seems to be simply getting their respective teams, replete with established stars, to function harmoniously. At times in their domestic campaign, that lack of an overarching philosophy has seemed like a weakness for Real, 15 points adrift in La Liga. But in the Champions League simply getting generational talents to coexist and cohere remains the key.

“The Champions League is going to be won by the team that’s the most hom*ogenous, has the best team spirit, plays excellent ream football,” Jupp Heynckes, the Bayern coach, said. “The most important thing is to have great players and to form a team out of players. The team who plays as a team, in harmony, with knowhow, will win the Champions League. You can’t buy the Champions League: a team has to grow, develop, you have to understand each other, get along, independent of being top stars.”

The previous time that Heynckes met Zinédine Zidane in the Champions League, he was the Real Madrid coach and Zidane was playing against Real, for Juventus, in the 1998 final. Real won 1-0 and Zidane subsequently moved to the Bernabeu. Since taking the reins two and a half seasons ago, Zidane’s success has surpassed all expectations, especially in this competition, where, incredibly, he has yet to taste elimination. He comes up against his old nemesis on the brink of an unprecedented achievement: no coach has won Europe’s premier competition three times running.

Heynckes’s CV is that of a sort of super-caretaker: he has not lasted more than two seasons in any of his previous 12 coaching jobs dating back to 1992, yet there have been brief snatches of incredible success: the 1998 victory with Real, the 2013 treble with Bayern, and his present spell, in which, having taken over a dysfunctional team after Carlo Ancelotti’s sacking, he has won 30 of his 35 matches.

Of the present cadre of elite coaches, it is perhaps Zidane with whom Heynckes has most in common: neither are visionaries, or dogmatists, or tactical gurus; both underplay their influence and see their role above all as one of man-management. And both have found a sweet spot for their talents in the Champions League among those to have coached more than 25 Champions League matches, Heynckes and Zidane have, respect-ively, the second and third-best win percentages, behind only Luis Enrique, the former Barcelona coach.

It is Zidane who has the ace in his hand, in the form of Cristiano Ronaldo. It is no exaggeration to say that no player has ever been in hotter form in this tournament than Ronaldo is now: he has scored 15 goals in ten games in this season’s competition. “He doesn’t have any weaknesses,” said Jérôme Boateng, one of the Bayern centre backs charged with shackling him.

Bayern’s principal cause for optimism lies in their own scoring form at the Allianz Arena, which has been astonishing. They have scored more than four goals in four of their past six home games. Real have conceded 12 goals en route to this stage — the joint highest of the semi-finalists, alongside Roma.