Why Atletico Madrid and Bayern Munich will entertain more than Manchester City and Real Madrid did

There was not much excitment in last night's 0-0 draw at the Etihad Stadium, but this evening's semi-final between Europe's two best sides should be far better.

Pep Guardiola, who has imposed his style at Bayern Munich, will move to Manchester City this summer. (Getty)

It was Jorge Valdano who gave a memorable title to the worst Champions League semi-final in recent memory, between Chelsea and Liverpool nine years ago.

“Put a sh*t hanging from a stick in the middle of this passionate, crazy stadium and there are people who will tell you it's a work of art,” Valdano wrote in Marca. “It's not. It's a sh*t hanging from a stick.”

Valdano, a football purist, was bemoaning the transformation of the game in the middle part of the last decade. “Chelsea and Liverpool are the clearest, most exaggerated example of the way football is going,” he said. “Very intense, very collective, very tactical, very physical, and very direct.”

The diagnosis was correct but what Valdano could not have predicted in May 2007 was that Pep Guardiola would take over at Barcelona the following season and change the game. That transformation is borne out by the numbers.

Between 2004 and 2008, the era which so upset Valdano, there was an average of 2.59 goals per game in the Champions League, with the average number of goals scored by a semi-finalist at 19.31. Across the last three full seasons, though, 2012-13 to 2014-15, the goals per game has risen to 2.91, with average goals scored by a semi-finalists now 26, a leap of more than one third.

Valdano’s worst fears, then, have not quite been realised. And yet last night at the Etihad Stadium he may have felt some shivers of recognition. Manchester City and Real Madrid served up the worst leg of a Champions League semi-final in recent years, playing out a 0-0 draw which both sides looked content enough with. Real Madrid had the best chances in the second half, while never dazzling, while City looked as if they could have played for hours and not scored.

These are two of the richest sides in Europe, teams who are meant to aspire to playing good football but there was almost none of that on show last night. It did not look like was a game between two of the best four teams in Europe, a tie to decide who should get to play in the Champions League final.

Tonight’s game at the Vicente Calderon, though, will be exactly that. Atletico Madrid and Bayern Munich are surely the two best teams left in the competition, probably the two best teams in Europe aside from Barcelona, who were knocked out by Atletico in the quarter-finals. There are seasons when the two best teams meet before the final – Bayern and Barcelona last year, Barcelona and Inter in 2010 – and this feels like one of them.

What Atletico and Bayern have, that City and Real do not, is a real sense of football identity that comes straight from their inspirational clear-thinking manager. Diego Simeone has been in charge at Atletico for four and a half years now and has shattered expectations with his intense powerful rigorous football. Winning the 2014 Spanish title and nearly winning the Champions League that year was one of the great achievements on modern management. If he could do similar this year he would become arguably the immortal coach of the modern era.

Guardiola is the philosophical opposite of Simeone – his teams demand the ball, rather than rejecting it – but he is a driven zealot for his own style of play. In three years at Bayern Munich he has instituted his own modern pass and move game, which is soon to bring their third Bundesliga title. The Champions League would be the perfect climax to his three years of work there.

The contrast between those two sides, and the unity of their purpose, with City and Real Madrid is clear enough. Madrid, of course, appointed managerial novice Zinedine Zidane as manager half-way through this season after sacking Rafael Benitez. City have lame-duck Manuel Pellegrini who will be replaced by Guardiola this season, having underwhelmed in his three seasons in charge in Manchester.

At the top end of the game, then, there is no substitute for identity. Which is why this evening’s match should be so much more engrossing than the disappointment of yesterday.