Champions League: Can Spain reign again?

He firmly believes not just in scouting opposition but researching them full too. The Champions League is full of teams it's easy to follow on television, live if you want to, and simple to swot up on. If Martino were complacent, if he slacked on this kind of preparatory work then it's clear that Champions League inexperience might become a factor. However I think he has several important challenges which will be far more central to whether or  not Barcelona punch their weight. Particularly athleticism, defending stingily and keeping their centre halves fit. 

SL: Well, it didn’t seem to do Pep Guardiola too much harm. While it does has its importance, ‘experience’ (often just applied as a substitute for ‘age’) seems to me to be a concept that we get far too hung up on, particularly when applied to players. And even if Martino does not have specific experience of the Champions League, where it is true that the tools needed to succeed will be different to the Spanish league, his players do. Much of this squad have won the competition twice, or more.

Also, the fact that Martino has come from outside may be positive insofar as he may propose different solutions to long-standing problems, just as Gerard Piqué hinted when he talked about the club previously being a ‘slave’ to the style in an interview with Gazetta dello Sport. So far his team has been a little more direct, more inclined to mix up the play and go long on occasions, which has seen them lose a little control but gain in unpredictability.

At the other end of the pitch, though, the early evidence so far is, however, that Barcelona’s failures are largely the same as they were last season: they remain vulnerable in defence. The failure to buy a central defender is baffling. That is a very basic, more tangible footballing problem than the manager’s lack of experience in the competition.   

GH: I guess both Sid and I have found that the UK, London especially, is extremely well educated in terms of who's up and coming at Barça and Madrid these days. At Madrid I think the obvious three to watch and get excited by this season are Varane, Isco and Morata.

Varane has already showed for Madrid and France that, on form, he's sublime. Calm in his thinking under pressure, a yard a head of most people in his reading of situations and several yards ahead of most players in terms of his raw pace. Not perfect, not fully fledged yet but with the potential to become the single best central defender anywhere if he concentrates, is taught well and if injuries respect him. Isco is majestic.

Not an athlete like Varane but one of those rare guys whose football brain and feet work not only in tandem but with innate intelligence. I know that there's a good judge of horse-flesh at Spurs who tried and tried to get his club to buy Isco over three years ago for a very low fee from the Valencia youth system. Irrespective of your club colours, watching Isco brings football joy. Morata is somewhere in between the two. A real brute to play against, strong and quick, he looks like he's someone who, like Villa did, can play wide, add verticality, add pace, cut in and score but who can also play out and out centre forward. Good lad with good attitude I'm told.

At Barcelona irrespective of 'big names' Neymar and his development will be key. I think that the club should, with such little money available, invested in a tall, powerful, ball-playing centre half. But they didn't. Thus they put all eggs in the Neymar basket.

His early weeks have been shrewd. Humble, hard working, making sure Messi likes him. So far so good. Can he now change gear and be the Neymar we saw in the Confederations Cup [the positive parts at least]? An indlugence of mine would be to hope that Isaac Cuenca gets rid of his injuries and fulfils his potential. A player of balance, vision and really good distribution. Wouldn't be surprised though if he's loaned out for six months - perhaps to the Premier League. 

SL: At Madrid and Barcelona, it often feels like even the ‘lesser known’ players are well known and of course the reality is that relatively few of the younger players are likely to play really significant roles this season.

Two that might are centre-back Marc Bartra (above) at Barcelona because of injury and striker Álvaro Morata at Madrid because of on-going doubts with Karim Benzema. And yet, in the Champions League at least, Benzema’s record is actually very good. Jesé is exciting too: talented and cocky, not afraid of anything. Maybe the surprise is not so much a case of unknown players as known players who end up having a bigger role than people might expect. Modric, perhaps.

GH: There's much to admire around Bayern, particularly their attention to detail while they try to dominate Europe for a generation. Sequentially they have broken their transfer record twice, their wage policy has been seriously bent out of shape, they've hired Sammer as a forward thinking and hugely ambitious football director, they've taken the blows to the chin of losing a couple of Champions League finals and come back not only fighting but winning.

What I don't like, and don't admire, is the chitter chatter around that club where everyone wants to have a bigger, more significant, more high profile voice. I have thought it disrespectful and self-defeating to hear about how some staff, some players and many media have been nipping and gnarling at Pep either in public or behind their hands. He's not perfect, he's so demanding he'll wear some people out.

But when they hired him they knew what they were getting, or should have known, and his role [how many times have I heard this idiotic thought vomited out by someone in the media or the professional game who should know better] is not to 'improve' on a treble but, literally, to dominate domestically and across Europe for five or six years. That's what they hired him for and that, assuredly, is what he went there for.

That in-fighting and arrogance which is only conquered every so often at Bayern is probably his greatest enemy because they have a fabulous squad, it's powerful, talented, hungry and athletic. Bayern are also capable of buying should they need to. So, yes, Pep, Bayern and Co. are everyone's No1 rival for the Champions League. 

SL: Here’s an understatement: Pep Guardiola is not a bad manager and Bayern Munich are not a bad team. So the short answer is: yes, he could. And Bayern may well be favourites, the biggest threat to the two Spanish clubs.

On the face of it, they are even stronger than last season (although the fact that they could not get Lewandowski until next season frustrates them). But the evolution towards a different style will not necessarily be easy and it can be difficult to maintain a really intense competitive edge after winning everything, however good the players’ intentions.

The pressure at Bayern, and I say this as an outsider, always seems to me to be really intense: it may be the only club outside Madrid and Barcelona where you also find what Cruyff called the entorno -- pressure, interference, interest, politics, media, obligation. Besides, it is worth looking beyond the obvious: there are other teams who, given a favourable draw and a bit of fortunate, will also be candidates.

GH: Neither should be outright tournament favourite, Madrid have certainly reinforced better and should benefit from the 'thank god the bad Mourinho atmosphere has gone' but there are some young, raw players in that squad. And they may be short of a striker.

Barcelona are evolving ... and ageing. IF they get all their players fit and firing on top gas for one last hurrah then they could be outside candidates for the final. But their unwillingness to add pace and height and power to either midfield or defence looks like an Achilles heel. 

SL: The last two years it seemed set up for them meet in the final. But fell in the semi-finals, almost as if it was kind of wrong for one to get there and the other not. It’s tempting then to say they’ll reach the same point again. Both seem to be confronted by significant doubts at the moment and neither is a clear favourite to win the competition. But they will certainly through their groups and the knock-out phase is still a long way away and things will probably look different in the spring.

Then the draw will have a significant say in their progress, too. An example: the truth is that although Madrid made three successive semi-finals after six years without winning a single knock out tie, that owed much to the benevolence of the draw. Six ties they went through, six times they were knocked out. Look at the six: they’d been knocked out by Juventus, Arsenal, Bayern, Roma, Liverpool and Lyon, while the knock out ties they won were against (a by then weakened) Lyon, Spurs, CSKA Moscow, Apoel and then United (where they were aided by that Nani red card).

Defeat against any of those would have been a significant failure. Equally, when Barcelona were defeated by Bayern Munich they could not say they had not been warned: they were beaten in Milan by a frankly poor side and scraped past PSG. I’m going to go with: they’ll both go out at the same stage ... unless they get each other.

Graham Hunter and Sid Lowe will be appearing at the London Sports Writing Festival on Friday, October 18 to discuss their books — Fear and Loathing in La Liga: Barcelona vs Real Madrid (Lowe) and Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World (Hunter). Details at londonsportswritingfestival.com and @lswf2013