5 things that will decide the outcome of Barcelona vs Bayern Munich

Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique will face off in the Champions League semi-final Barcelona welcome Bayern Munich to Camp Nou in one of the Champions League’s classic matchups in this season's second semi-final.To add a little more spice to the occasion, Pep Guardiola returns to the Camp Nou for the first time in a competitive fixture and naturally the narrative in the build up to this one has almost exclusively been written by the man from Santpedor.Barca will still have their 7-0 aggregate drubbing at the hands of the Bavarians fresh in their minds, but this is an entirely different Blaugrana to the one which was comprehensively outplayed on those two occasions.Luis Enrique inherited a tired looking and out-of-sorts Barca from Tata Martino, but he has turned them into something approaching Guardiola vintage. In the process, he has surpassed Pep with the most amount of wins in his first 50 games as manager.42 wins from his first 50 games is an astonishing return and if he manages two more he will put the ghost of Guardiola firmly to bed. Game on!We take a look at five key factors that will decide the tie.

#1 Bayern\'s injury crisis

You can have the best players in the world and the best team in the world, but if you are beset by injuries then you become just as vulnerable as any other side. Whilst they are not necessarily the cause of an under par performance per se, injuries have to be a factor.

For example, when Bayern last played Barcelona in the Champions League, Lionel Messi had been struggling with injuries for a while and he was far from the player that everyone knew he could be. One or two other first-teamers were also not at their best.

On this particular occasion, Bayern will be without Arjen Robben for both legs of the tie. One of the chief destroyers of Barcelona last time out has a hamstring injury that rules him out for the season.

David Alaba too is definitely out whilst Franck Ribery is unlikely to make the first leg and Robert Lewandowski will only be able to do so by wearing a protective mask, to aid his broken nose and broken cheekbone. Hardly the best way to prepare for your biggest match of the season.

#2 Lionel Messi

This time Bayern Munich will face a fully fit Lionel Messi. A hungry Lionel Messi. A 51-goal Lionel Messi.

The predatory instinct has returned and the Argentine is playing somewhere approaching his best form. Credit should, of course, be paid to Neymar and Luis Suarez for the roles they have played to bring Messi full circle, but there is no doubt whatsoever that this is an entirely different La Pulga from 2013.

Even if Philipp Lahm has had the better of Messi on both the domestic and international stages thus far, Guardiola’s Bayern have never faced a front three like Barca’s. Bale, Benzema and Cristiano weren’t in the kind of form that the Catalan club’s triplet are currently enjoying at present, nor did they present such a mobile threat.

Lahm may well have Messi’s number again in terms of stopping him from scoring, but the crossfield balls he has been popping off with unerring accuracy this season will provide chance after chance for his colleagues.

You simply can’t keep a good man down. With 25 goals and 17 assists in 25 games in 2015, Messi will be decisive.

#3 Pep Guardiola\'s tactical nous

Bayern Munich’s passing style under Pep Guardiola (Image credit – tactic-nizar.blogspot.com

Perhaps the one thing that Pep Guardiola has over almost all of his managerial contemporaries is a tactical nous and, just as importantly, a flexibility.

For example, per WhoScored, Bayern have utilised a 3-4-2-1 formation, a 4-3-3, a 3-4-3 and a 4-2-3-1 all in the space of the last half dozen games. A 4-1-4-1 hasn’t been unheard of either.

Much credit has to go to the players, of course, for being able to deliver on Guardiola’s explicit and demanding instructions. However, credit should go to the man who is brave enough to tackle every situation differently, who is able to look at a match scenario through a different pair of eyes, who is not constrained by rigidity in selection, nor contained by the weight of history.

A thinker, an artist. A danger.

#4 Typical Barcelona pressing

By the end of Tata Martino’s tenure at Camp Nou, most people were suggesting that Barcelona had become predicatble and had lost focus. There certainly seemed something amiss, but it was a mixture of a lack of intensity in training, long aimless balls forward and the fact that players, in general, were not at their best.

What Luis Enrique has recovered, and arguably a lot quicker than expected, was an urgency to Barca’s play. The “six-second” rule, if it hasn’t been publicly mentioned, is definitely back on the agenda. Have you seen the way in which Barca are harrassing opponents again to recover possession of the ball?

Munich had trouble against Real Madrid in last season’s competition because of the way in which Los Blancos swarmed all over their players. If they haven’t learned from that episode, Barcelona will take them to the cleaners.

#5 Big players, big performances expected

It’s the semi-finals of the best club competition in the world, the Champions League, a time when the big names need to step up to the plate with big performances.

Both clubs have dominated this stage of the competition over the last few years with success and failure coming in equal measure.

Now is not the time to be a shrinking violet or to play the percentage game. Risk brings reward and at the conclusion of what is expected to be two wonderful games of pure, attacking football, the reward is a date in Berlin and a chance to claim European football’s most glamourous prize. Again.

Only two managers in history have won the trophy on three occasions - Bob Paisley and Carlo Ancelotti. Pep Guardiola can join that elite group while Luis Enrique can build a new Blaugrana dynasty. It remains to be seen which set of players will provide the pathway to glory.