PSG v Manchester City: Mauricio Pochettino and Pep Guardiola set to renew old rivalry in Champions League

Duo will face-off for 30th time in careers when two teams clash in semi-final first leg on Wednesday

Kylian Mbappe celebrates after scoring PSG's first goal in their 3-2 Champions League quarter-final first-leg victory against Bayern Munich on April 7. Getty

Bayern's Thomas Mueller after missing a chance at the Allianz Arena in Munich. AP

Kylian Mbappe scores PSG's first goal. Reuters

Kylian Mbappe and Neymar celebrate the opening goal. Getty

Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting celebrates scoring Bayern's first goal. AP

Marquinhos celebrates after scoring PSG's second goal. AP

PSG's Neymar sees his shot blocked by Bayern goalkeeper Manuel Neuer. PA

Thomas Muller heads home Bayern's second goal. Getty

Kylian Mbappe scores PSG's third and his second against Bayern. AP

Thomas Muller celebrates with team mate Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting after levelling the scores. Getty

PSG's Brazilian forward Neymar controls the ball. AFP

Thomas Muller celebrates after scoring Bayern's second goal. Getty

PSG players celebrate after Kylian Mbappe's second goal. PA

PSG forward Kylian Mbappe appeals for a foul during the game. AFP

It was, said the local sports newspaper, “a derby with a difference – but still full of tradition, like refereeing controversies and plenty of conflict.” Unusually, this combative Catalan derby finished with the underdogs, Espanyol, top of La Liga, and Barcelona mid-table.

But it was only September, early in the season. One newcomer to the city of Barcelona and its derbies would soon learn the odds were generally stacked against his club.

He was Mauricio Pochettino, a rugged 22 year-old defender freshly arrived at Espanyol from Argentina. "Committed, no frills", noted El Mundo Deportivo of 'Poch's' performance in the first of his many Catalan derbies.

The paper gave him the same top marks as Barcelona’s most influential midfielder in the tetchy 0-0 draw. That man was Pep Guardiola. He had “led the team, and stamped his personality on the game.”

Both Pochettino and Guardiola were at the centre of controversies that warm day in 1994. Espanyol had a goal ruled out for a harsh ruling by the referee that Pochettino had fouled Barcelona’s Ronald Koeman. Guardiola was struck by an object thrown from the crowd.

So it was that Poch and Pep met for the first time as rivals, in a fiery, edgy and attritional beginning to a saga that marks its 30th episode in Paris on Wednesday. They would go to be combatants another 10 times as players. They would meet again as young, up-and-coming coaches at Espanyol and Barca in the 2000s. They would be Premier League duellers for three-and-half seasons as their managerial careers developed.

They have been European rivals, too, as they will be at the Parc des Princes, when Pochettino guides a Paris Saint-Germain – who appointed him in January – take on the City whom Guardiola has led to every major English prize, but not yet guided to the desired European Cup. And in the Champions League, the history of their jousts favours Poch, thanks to one of the most memorable quarter-finals of the modern era, when Pochettino’s Tottenham Hotspur upset predictions by eliminating City on away goals in an eight-goal thriller of a tie.

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This time, the stakes are even higher, a place in a Champions League final at stake. The net worth of the players they instruct is bigger than it ever has been in the Poch-versus-Pep saga. PSG and City have spent more than any other club over the past five years building super squads capable of winning what be a first European Cup.

Any rivalry that stretches back more than quarter of a century is bound to have nourished the odd grudge. There have been spiky moments, when Poch-and-Pep turned Punch-and-Judy – not least when, at City, Guardiola called Pochettino’s Spurs "The Harry Kane Team". Pochettino took that as a sneer, and reminded his old adversary he never used to refer to Guardiola’s great Barcelona as ‘The Leo Messi Team’.

In 18 head-to-heads as rival coaches, Pochettino has won just three times, but that epic Champions League victory, of the Harry Kane Team over City two years ago – via a 4-3 second-leg defeat in Manchester that would have swung the other way but for a late City 'goal' being ruled out by a paper-thin VAR offside call – is burnt on the memory.

Might that dramatic night have a bearing on PSG-City? “Two different games, two different teams, a different contest,” insisted Pochettino. “The main thing is that this will be a battle between two great teams, nothing personal between him and me. Guardiola is one of the best coaches in the world, and I respect hugely what he has done throughout his career.”

Neither coach was yesterday defining their opponent by a single player. PSG, so expensively assembled in the attacking positions are no more The Neymar Team than they are The Kylian Mbappe Team or The Angel Di Maria Team.

Yet to list those names is to spell out the very special capacity of Pochettino's front men to exploit, with speed and precise delivery, any space behind an opponent who pushes their defensive line up high, as City tend to. Bayern Munich and Barcelona, eliminated by PSG in the previous two rounds, both suffered against the French team's swift breaks.

“We are confident,” said Pochettino, “although I’d prefer to call it calm and relaxed. It will be a very hard game, City are having a fantastic season, and have huge talents, like Phil Foden, Riyad Mahrez, Gabriel Jesus, Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne. You are talking about some of the best in the world, and they a very hard side to keep control of.”

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