The pre-match build up was all about our greatest manager Pep Guardiola and his homecoming. Those all articles had one thing in common i.e how he prepares himself before the big match. Some excerpts taken from "The Pep Confidential":

  "It is his preparation before all big games. Guardiola locks himself in an office, puts on some quiet music, watches a series of matches and takes a lot of notes. From that swirl of information, he hopes to eventually arrive at the crucial insight"

"The instant I know, for sure, that I've got it. I know how to win the match. It only lasts for about a minute, maybe 80 seconds, but it's the moment my job becomes truly meaningful to me."

      In short , the build up to the most anticipated match was all about Pep Guardiola and how he may devise some master plan to stop the best attacking trio  by taking lots of notes by locking the door in dark room, blah, blah.  Luis Enrique almost never had any coverage from the media as he spends much of his time watching porn prior to the big matches. Anyway, let's not dwell too much into the media bullshit. We should  all know by now that they love Mou and Pep. But some of us who know that, our beloved Pep  will never ever park the bus. Though Guardiola tries insane amount of formations, his core philosophy remains the same: Keep the ball, press for the ball. But, Barca have changed a lot since Guardiola years. Our defense is more solid than ever and our attack has broken all the previous records as MSN have already stacked up more than 100 goals. This Barca is moulded under Enrique. We don't give up, we fight for every ball. We are resilient and if needed we bypass midfield, we bypass old tradition. Because winning is all that matters. They had missed couple of key players, which made us favorites before the clash .

      Coming to the game, we expected a lot of goals before the kick off because both the teams are brand ambassadors of attacking football. Pep Guardiola started with 3 at the back. Some call him brave to start 3 at the back with one-one marking against most decorated team in the world of football. But I'd call him naive. Pep started a regular right back in place of left back position against Lionel Messi. Absurd. 3 at the back meant, Bayern flooded the midfield and were pressing us for every ball. Intense pressing meant, we couldn't play from the back, but we easily bypassed their press as we have more experience than any other team in this regard. Ter Stegen lofted the ball into the wide areas. In one such occasion, Messi headed the ball towards Suarez which got him into one on one vs Neur, but his shot was saved. At this moment, Pep realized that 4 at the back is must for this deadly trio and went with what looked like 4-1-4-1 formation.

  Prior to the match, a journalist asked Pep Guardiola whether the match would end goal-less, he shook his head. Much to everyone's surprise, it was goal-less until 70 odd minutes. Much to our frustration, it looked like it would end in stalemate, but then Messi happened. In the game of this  stature, only one man could make the difference and his name is Lionel Messi. After all those missed chances by Neymar and Suarez, it had to be him.

 For the first goal, Alves pressed for  the ball high up the pitch and wins it. Then he does a beautiful nutmeg on fraud Xabi Alonso and glides the ball to Messi. This time Messi cracks the ball into the net by beating Neur at his near post. The goal was reminiscent of his champions league final goal vs Manchester united.



At 1-0 we didn't settled down. Instead, our hunger to win this match increased . Every Barca player pressed for the ball. We made sure that they didn't have any breathing space in the match of this intensity. Bayern were desperate for the away goal, but our defense and midfield was good enough to stop their attack and start a counter-attack instead . Chances started to flourish and we were never going to miss any more chances for the night.

Out of all goals, second goal was insane. Rakitic sends the ball to Messi. Messi feints towards his prefer side, but goes the other way which leaves Boaeteng on his backside before chipping the ball over Manuel Neur with his weaker foot. Messi, Messsiiiiiii cheered the Camp Nou.



So, we thought it would end 0-0, but Messi had a different idea so we went 2-0 up. But at FT, the score was 3-0, thanks to naivete displayed by Pep Guardiola. The tie is not over yet, but should ease through the second leg by keeping the basics right.

It was, is and will be MESSI's era

Visca Barca