Master and apprentice Guardiola and Xavi meet again in Barcelona v Man City friendly

When, 14 years ago this week, Pep Guardiola embarked on his first job as a senior coach, he chose his allies carefully.

His goalkeeping coach at Barcelona, a role crucial to Guardiola’s play-from-the-back game plan, was Juan Carlos Unzue. The midfield tactician-in-chief was Xavi.

Guardiola had been a teammate of both, and as a novice manager making some bold decisions about who belonged – and who did not – in his Barca, he wanted sharp minds and trusted figures to bounce ideas off.

Xavi, the relative novice now in Guardiola’s old job at Barca, and his mentor, now the manager of Manchester City, meet as opposing coaches for the first time this evening in a fund-raising friendly match with the much-appreciated Unzue foremost in their thoughts.

Unzue was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS, two and half years ago. Camp Nou is expected to be close to capacity to raise money for research into the disease.

The attendance will be swelled by a fascination at the coaches’ head-to-head, as Xavi embarks on his first full season as a coach in Europe, and Guardiola makes only his second appearance in the away team’s dugout at a stadium where, with two European Cups in his first three years, he launched his stellar managerial career.

He will receive a rousing welcome from a Camp Nou in elevated spirits. Barca’s season had its lift-off at the weekend, a 4-1 win at Real Sociedad spreading optimism that heavy spending, funded by the club’s long-term mortgaging of future revenue, has armed Xavi with a formidable side.

Robert Lewandowski, formerly under Guardiola’s watch during the striker’s prolific time at Bayern Munich, scored his first two Barcelona goals at La Reale following his €45 million move from Germany. The