Josep Guardiola, Ernst Happel and José Mourinho (left to right) have all proved inspirational in motivating their side before a final

Six years later, Juventus were holed up in a castle- cum-hotel on the outskirts of Novi Sad in Serbia. “I felt like beating my head against the wall,” grumbled Franco Causio. “I was at once wound up, bored silly and mentally and physically exhausted.” A few doors down the hallway, in a cold, cell-like room, full-back Silvio Longobucco’s misery was compounded by news from across town. “We read in the papers that the Ajax players were having a good time with their wives and girlfriends in a beautiful hotel. While they relaxed, we accumulated tension.” Having partners around can have palpable psychological benefits. “It can create a sense of normality, which can deflect a lot of pressure from the players,” explains Barton. “The last thing a player needs when a big match is coming up is to spend the whole day thinking about it. This can lead to anxiety, stress and occasionally exhaustion before it has even begun.” So how do coaches find the happy medium between concentration and relaxation ahead of the big day? They will often organise recreational activities. Liverpool FC went ten-pin bowling in Istanbul in 2005, while Real Madrid CF, like FC Bayern München 26 years before them, played a round of golf before their final at Hampden Park in 2002. “To an outsider, we’d have seemed as pathologically

relaxed as ever,” said Steve McManaman. “We went to a typical Scottish country hotel on the edge of a loch with a lovely golf course. Some of our lads went out to play. Santi Solari and I were in a buggy. César, teeing off somewhere, whacked his ball right through the buggy’s plastic. That was close. Albert Celades was in another buggy trying to go up a slope, but he couldn’t stop it rolling backwards and he and César ended up knee-deep in a pond. The fear of failure was huge.” Ernst Happel, who led SV Hamburger to European glory in 1983, tried to relax his players. Hamburg faced Juventus in the final, and the gifted bianconeri were clear favourites. On the morning of the final in Athens, Happel and five of his players, including Felix Magath and Horst Hrubesch, took a stroll in the Greek capital. “Happel just smoked and let us do the talking,” Magath recalled. Hrubesch said: “He asked us who should mark Michel Platini. We all agreed on Jürgen Groh. But Happel had long since arrived at his decision. He just wanted to make us feel involved.” The man who would mark Platini, Happel had already decided, was Wolfgang Rolff. Rinus Michels, the Total Football mastermind who led AFC Ajax to the European Champion Clubs’ Cup in 1971, used the German term fingerspitzengefühl

(its literal translation is intuitively knowing where the boot pinches) to describe the knack top coaches have for understanding what a player needs at a given moment in time. This might mean finding a common enemy against which the team can unite – a ploy, Barton says, Mourinho uses to good effect: “Mourinho picks fights with other coaches, teams, officials, opposing fans and even the press to create a siege mentality among his players. By identifying an enemy, it motivates his players to perform for their ‘general’.” AC Milan president Silvio Berlusconi has proved adept at this technique, adapting a line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem If for a speech before the final against Benfica in 1990. “If you can react to injustices by remaining just, then you will be a man,” he said,

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We’d have seemed as pathologically relaxed as ever. f But the fear ofailure was huge

reminding the players of how SSC Napoli had controversially beaten them to the scudetto. The year before, against FC Steaua Bucuresti at the Camp Nou, Berlusconi had quipped that the Romanians spent too much time studying Karl Marx to be a threat on the pitch. Politics provided a more serious inspiration for coach Louis van Gaal when Bayern faced Manchester United FC in the quarter-final this season. “At half-time I gave a speech, ‘Yes, we can,’ like Obama,” said van Gaal after his team reached the last four on away goals. Ultimately, it is more often the audacity of hope than

fear of failure that leads to UEFA Champions League glory. “Tonight it’s for life and beyond the grave. Have no regrets. Good luck,” wrote Lisandro López on the dressing room whiteboard when Olympique Lyonnais visited the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu in March. We can only imagine what is being said or written there now. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16