Crunch time in El Clasico

Part of what has been exceedingly attractive about Barcelona over the last few years and now increasingly Madrid and Athletic is the mentality that there is no barrier, psychological or sporting, in the way a team turns up at a hostile stadium, imposes a game plan and performs as if it were playing in front of its own faithful fans.

It was always going to be extremely hostile for Madrid in Munich.

Pregame comments in which the regal Franz Beckenbauer suggested that Real Madrid was a less important, less grand club than Bayern and less "spontaneously creative than Barcelona" were actually quite friendly in terms of how the Germans often speak about Los Blancos.

Bayern president Uli Hoeness once described Florentino Perez's project as a "circus" and this week claimed that "they respect us more than we respect them."

So to lose was very, very painful for Mourinho & Co. To what extent does that tell us something about the Clasico?

To my way of thinking there are, basically, two types of coaches in the world of football -- defensive and attacking -- and when you boil it down and accept that there will be moments when all teams, even defensive ones, can play flowing football, those are the two schools of thought.

Mourinho, for all the record-breaking goals his team will produce this season, is a defensive coach in mentality. Not at all without the capacity to attack, entertain and take risks -- but of a defensive mindset first and foremost.

Clearly he and his team will believe that the narrow margin of the scoreline and the away goal will permit them to defeat Bayern at the Bernabeu and progress back to Munich for the final. That might well be the case, but there is now a slightly greater risk that Madrid is eliminated and the Liga title becomes even more of a Holy Grail project.

Mourinho may throb with desire to make personal history by becoming the first man to lift the Champions League trophy three times with three different teams, but what he must do is convert his team's La Liga superiority into a trophy win. Otherwise he will be dispatched, with his right to depart in high dudgeon claiming genius and misinterpretation by the Spanish media removed.

All this, I reckon, makes him more likely to adopt a "Don't lose at any cost" philosophy Saturday night in Barcelona.

If so, that will be a shame.

Barcelona's Brilliance

Graham Hunter is also the author of "Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World," available as an e-book on the iPad, Kindle and Kobo. The printed version is available in paperback and can be ordered at BackPage Press.

In my opinion, two things suggest that Mourinho should order his team to press high up the pitch, attack Barcelona and attempt to do to Pep Guardiola's team what they have routinely done to Madrid at the Bernabeu over the last three and a half years.

For one, at Stamford Bridge we saw the logical conclusion to a handful of games in which Barca's stars have looked competent and creative, but not clinical. For a few weeks now Xavi & Co. have had the opportunity to score freely, because build-up play has been quite good and wears opponents down. But time and time again, it has lacked the killer touch. In London, Barca didn't even have the touch of a minor schoolyard bully, let alone an assassin.

One of the truths we need to hold self-evident is that Barcelona's best defense is its attack -- for two reasons. First, the pressing that makes it tough for unwary opponents to even get out of their own half, and second, the gargantuan number of goals Guardiola's team has scored since he took over.

If Barcelona doesn't put its chances away, the team becomes more human and more prone to suffering from human flaws. Just for the moment Guardiola is waiting for Cesc Fabregas, Pedro, Andres Iniesta and Alexis Sanchez (who may not be fit to start anyway) to start scoring at their normal rate. Which just leaves Lionel Messi, who has only managed the derisory total of 63 goals this season.

Dependence? No -- not normally. Dependence when others are not converting their chances -- certainly.

And if Mourinho needed another reason to consider going for the jugular -- rather than drawing Barcelona into an aggressive, debilitating battle designed to ensure that Madrid doesn't lose -- it's the last three Clasicos at the Camp Nou.

One year ago today, Mourinho won his only match against Barcelona as Madrid manager in a Copa del Rey final in which Los Blancos played on the front foot, attacked and stood firm versus a Barca side which, then as now, had hit a small dry spot in its river of goals.

But Madrid went on to lose at home in the Champions League semifinal in a match that still haunts Mourinho and Madridistas. What that controversial home defeat seems to have obscured is that in the second leg, down 3-0 on aggregate, Madrid cut loose. It attacked, pressed Xavi, scored and very nearly added two more. The game finished 1-1 but Madrid was clearly in the ascendancy, even denied a good goal from Gonzalo Higuain.

The Supercopa second leg in August was a barnstorming match, and Barca only won in the last moments because Messi played like a genius that night; the 3-2 victory could easily have gone either way.

Then in January a 2-2 draw in which, again, once Madrid was 4-1 down on aggregate it played with pace and sporting aggression, fighting high up the pitch and scoring twice -- by the end Barcelona was holding on for dear life.

The stats establish, without question, that over the last four years Barcelona has been immensely superior to Real Madrid (and everyone else), but the search for the "right" means to defeat them needs to be ceaseless and intelligent for all serious opponents.

Madrid has started to make the Camp Nou crowd nervous. Barcelona, I think, is even happier playing Clasicos at the Bernabeu where it can soak up pressure, pick Madrid apart and turn the crowd against its own players. On Saturday night the Camp Nou crowd will be loyal and throaty but very, very nervous because, ultimately, defeat or draw and the Blaugrana can say adios to three years of La Liga domination.

Maybe Mourinho will gain his preferred result by opting for attrition, counterattack and pushing the physicality of his team's display to the limits. After all, the only Clasico he's won yet was robustly refereed by Undiano Mallenco, who will also be in charge Saturday.