Bayern Munich will be driven by a desire to make amends for defeat in the Champions League final two years ago when they confront Chelsea in this year’s showpiece, yet their midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger has acknowledged the considerable threat posed on Saturday by opponents eager to atone for their own recent disappointments in the competition.

Bayern welcome Chelsea to the Allianz Arena with expectations building in the city and memories still fresh from losing to Internazionale, then managed by José Mourinho, in the 2010 final in Madrid. Jupp Heynckes’s side were eclipsed by Borussia Dortmund in both domestic league and cup competitions this term, results that have served to heap more pressure on them to go on and claim the club’s fifth European Cup, though Schweinsteiger suggested Chelsea should be considered favourites this weekend.

“It was disappointing two years ago, when we faced a defensive side and were punished on the break,” said the Germany international, recalling Inter’s 2-0 success at the Bernabéu. “The team that makes the least mistakes wins games like that. We’re a better team now and have learned from that defeat but it was still disappointing and that is another motivation for me going into this game. But then it is the same for the Chelsea players, who also lost a final.

“Those who were in Moscow [against Manchester United in 2008] will have the extra motivation. They will be the most dangerous and will know maybe that this is their last chance to win the title they unfortunately lost there. Players like [Frank] Lampard, [Didier] Drogba, Ashley Cole and [Michael] Essien. Drogba is a player who can get a goal out of nothing. He is probably their most dangerous player. And we should not forget that, if you beat Barcelona across two games, you must be a very good side. You can always beat Barcelona in a one-off game but across two legs is the mark of a good side. Because they did that they will actually be playing the role of favourites even if we are playing at home, which might also make a slight difference.”

Schweinsteiger, capped 90 times and a mainstay for club and country, has not confronted Lampard directly since the World Cup knockout game in Bloemfontein in 2010 when the Englishman saw a goal denied, despite the ball crossing the line, and the Germans eventually prevailed 4-1. The Chelsea midfielder’s goal would have completed a first-half comeback. “That game wasn’t easy,” said Schweinsteiger. “If Lampard’s goal had counted – sorry, his ‘shot’ – it would have been 2-2 and who knows what happens then? Think what kind of effect that would have had on England.

“It’s possible I will be in direct confrontation again with Lampard on the pitch on Saturday and I have huge respect for him. Everything he does in the game has an effective use, it’s always thought through. He’s similar to Xabi Alonso [in that] he plays with his eyes. In my opinion it would be a mistake for England not to use him at the Euros because, if you get to the Champions League final, you can surely help the team through the European Championships.”

There remains the possibility of England and Germany renewing their rivalry at those finals, with Schweinsteiger stressing that Roy Hodgson might draw inspiration from Joachim Löw’s team as he seeks to mount a challenge. “I always think England should be considered one of the favourites,” added the midfielder. “But you have to play as a unit, not as a group of individuals, if you want to win something. England have very good individuals but maybe they are not so good as a unit. Like Germany are.

“Look at Argentina in 2010: they had great individuals but they didn’t play as a unit. Why did Dortmund win the championship here in Germany? Because they play as a team and, maybe, Bayern were more a group of individuals. If we had played the whole of the season as we did in the two semi-final games against Real Madrid, we would be [league] champions now.”

Ryan Giggs has said his Manchester United team-mate Paul Scholes is at the peak of his form and should be essential to England‘s hopes at Euro 2012.

Scholes collected the most recent of his 66 caps in 2004 before stepping down from international football to spend more time with his family. There have been suggestions, though, that the 37-year-old could be tempted to return for his country in this summer’s tournament, especially with his former United and England team?mate Gary Neville now forming part of the national team’s coaching set-up.

Roy Hodgson names his squad for the European Championship finals on Wednesday and Giggs believes the inclusion of Scholes would give England an extra edge.

“If he started the first game against France, he’d be one of the best players on the pitch,” said the Welshman, referring to England’s opening match at the competition. “Him and Xavi are the same sort of players. They just control the tempo of great teams. To do that you need to be a special player and that’s what [Scholes] does. In any team in any tournament he would shine. It’s not like he just turns up for games and does it. He does it every day in training.”

For Giggs the continuing presence of Scholes in United’s lineup is critical. “It’s massively important that we can keep that sort of quality at the club,” the Welshman said. “I think it’s probably been the best he’s ever played since he’s come back [from retirement in January]. He just doesn’t give the ball away, he controls the tempo of games.

“In training and in games you find yourself laughing because he makes it look so easy. He’s easily the best player I’ve played with because of that fact. He’s going to get talked about because of the quality he’s got, he’s English and there’s a major championships coming up. Whether he wants to go I’m the wrong person to ask. But he’s the kind of player you’d want in your team.”

Giggs also took a certain glee in the fact that Scholes’s decision is irrelevant to a Welshman: “I’m going on holiday on Thursday, I don’t care what he does. If Scholesy does decide to play and Roy Hodgson does decide to try and bring him out he’d be a great addition to the squad.”

The fascination with United does not end at Scholes with Hodgson having added Neville to his coaching staff. The manager went further still, since his trust in Neville was demonstrated by the four?year contract presented to him. Enhancing England is probably not one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s priorities but his influence on Old Trafford employees should be of value to their country.

Giggs believes Neville will make a “good impact” on the England squad. “He’s obviously done well on the TV this year, his views, his outlook on football. He’s got fresh ideas. He’s played at the top himself, he’s got so many positives and so many things he can bring to the table.

“He knows what the modern-day footballer wants and needs, which is important. He’s just come out of playing football himself, played at the top level, gone to tournaments. While he was at those tournaments maybe he thinks things should have been done differently, I don’t know, but he’ll bring all that experience to England.”

The fate of the national side is hard to discern but new figures such as Neville may provide a modest contribution to the refashioning of England.

Jupp Heynckes has just cracked another joke, the latest involving mock bewilderment that Arjen Robben would ever have considered leaving Bayern Munich for pastures new. “After all, we have the best doctor in the world on our medical staff,” comes the punch line, the German playing up to an audience all too aware of the winger’s fragility throughout his time at Chelsea, then roaring with laughter at his own wittiness. The guffaws only peter out as, still delighted with himself, he chuckles: “I’m a right sly fox, aren’t I?”

That, more than a mischievous sense of humour, will be Chelsea’s immediate concern. Awaiting them at the Allianz Arena on Saturday is a Bayern team overseen by a man who, after almost half a century in the professional game, has experienced virtually everything football can conjure.

As a player, Heynckes’ haul included four Bundesliga titles and a Uefa Cup with Borussia Mönchengladbach, and a World Cup and European Championship with Germany. A nomadic managerial career has since taken in nine clubs in three countries, the pinnacle scaled in 1998 when he claimed Real Madrid’s first European Cup for 32 years. This is a manager with pedigree.

A reunion with José Mourinho and Real in the Champions League final was supposed to represent Chelsea’s worst nightmare. Instead, their season’s defining fixture will be contested against one of the most respected coaches on the circuit who will send a team out on to their own patch.

Bayern, the second best team in the Bundesliga, should be considered favourites at home to the sixth best side in the Premier League, but Heynckes is wary of the threat that awaits. “I watched the first leg of their semi-final against Barcelona and wasn’t that surprised Chelsea went through in the end,” he says. “I knew of the history between the clubs, and that Barcelona always have a difficult time when they meet. And, in that final phase of the second leg, Barça were not this ‘fresh force’ we have come to know. They seemed knackered, and [Lionel] Messi was not himself. But that does not diminish Chelsea’s performance. I have watched and coached in the Spanish League. I know how hard it is to beat Barcelona. And now I’m left to wonder if Barça can’t beat Chelsea, how can we?

“They are a team on that same high level. If you look at their recent history in the European Cup, they have always progressed into the latter stages. They competed with Barcelona [in 2009], and were unfortunate on penalties against Manchester United [in 2008]. Perhaps this season, after their change of manager, the side has become closer together as a unit and are now playing completely as a team. Maybe they see this as their last chance together to try and win the Champions League: for Lampard, Drogba, Cech …

“They are strong, and I have been very impressed by the way Roberto Di Matteo acts beside the pitch. He is very relaxed and seems in control. That shows his team are close together, fighting towards one goal. The philosophy has changed recently. That is the psychological feeling he has achieved at the club.”

Drawing praise from a manager of Heynckes’ experience should leave Di Matteo, a relative novice of brief spells at Milton Keynes Dons, West Bromwich Albion and as Chelsea’s interim first-team coach, brimming with pride. Only Otto Rehhagel has coached more games in the Bundesliga than Heynckes, with this his third spell in charge at Bayern. The first, from 1987-91, had yielded two league titles and, harshly, the sack just 12 months after he could not repeat that second success, a decision the club president Uli Hoeness claims still to regret.

At Real he ended the European Cup drought but was granted a solitary season, a fourth place finish with Barça a distant top prompting his dismissal regardless. Against Chelsea he confronts a team overseen by a stand-in manager whose own future beyond the expiry of a one-year contract at the end of next month would not be guaranteed even if he claims the London side’s first Champions League.

Is Chelsea a job Heynckes would ever consider? “At my age? I don’t think so.” But Luiz Felipe Scolari took on the challenge at 62, even if he did only last eight months in the role. “And I am 67. But you wonder if it is the most difficult job in football? Have you heard of Real Madrid? I was there one year. Fabio Capello, one year. Guus Hiddink, one year [actually only seven months]. John Toshack, one year [nine months].

“When you become the manager of a leading club, there are so many situations you have to cope with. You have to deal with the people in charge of the club, the players, the media, the expectation … you have to deal with the whole environment around the club, and that is something you can find difficult. I know that. Even at Bayern it is a difficult situation sometimes. But you have to be totally emotionless about things. At Madrid, it went without saying that the coach would change. Every year they changed the manager. I even said publicly after six months I would not be staying for a second season, even if we won the Champions League. I knew I would not be there.

“That is the way it works sometimes, and you need your own principles. A manager can never accept somebody at the top influencing his decisions about the team. If that sort of thing ever happened, I would just have to stop. I could not accept it. I would never expect to have to explain my tactics to the club president, either. I have never done that – most of those I’ve worked under would not understand them, anyway. No, as a manager you have to have fun. You have to enjoy your work and be content. Satisfied. You have to have an atmosphere in which it is pleasant to work. Mourinho showed that you can do that very successfully at Chelsea. But you can only do it with time and patience. You have to have that time to develop a team.”

Mourinho arguably remains the only Chelsea manager to have been permitted such a luxury under Roman Abramovich, whose lieutenant at Cobham, the sporting director Michael Emenalo, had regularly quizzed André Villas-Boas over the reasoning of selection and tactical approach. Heynckes will benefit from time at Bayern, even in the wake of Saturday’s drubbing in the German Cup final to the league champions Borussia Dortmund, and will see out the final year of his contract at least, regardless of Saturday’s result, bolstered as he is by an apparently healthy relationship with Hoeness and the chief executive, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. “We really get on,” says Heynckes. “We can walk into a room together with three opinions but, when we leave, we only ever have one. Mine.”

That, too, is accompanied by a bellow of laughter. The strength of that relationship might excuse what feels like a season of domestic under-achievement. Dortmund, who have now won their last five matches against Bayern, sprinted away with the league title with Saturday’s cup win in Berlin rubbing salt into the wounds. Heynckes described some of Bayern’s defending during that 5-2 reverse as “catastrophic”. There have also been internal divisions this term, with Robben clashing with Philipp Lahm, Thomas Müller and, most publicly, Franck Ribéry, all of which has tested the manager’s authority.

“But that sometimes happens in football,” says Heynckes. “I played at the highest level, so I know what kind of things go through a player’s mind and how he might behave, what patterns will crop up in the day-to-day routine. Nothing surprises me. I am in charge of one of the leading European teams, so I clearly know how to man-manage people. I’d hope I have a certain authority.”

His team will be shocked by that loss in Berlin and eager to make amends. If there is vulnerability at the back, they can be impressively slick in attack, with slippery wingers and the prolific Mario Gómez as a focal point. Bayern’s achievement in topping their Champions League group – above Napoli and Manchester City – and then overcoming Basel, Marseille and, most impressively, Real in the knock-out stages was worthy of merit. What frustration there has been this term has been reserved for the domestic campaign: Bayern may have finished as runners-up, but that feels inadequate. “And yet we still ended up with three points more than when we won the title in 2010,” adds the manager. “Our only problem has been that Borussia Dortmund have had such a fantastic season. We had a slack time after the winter break and it was gone.”

Domestic league and cup near-misses have placed more emphasis on claiming the club’s fifth European Cup, in the process making amends for the disappointment of losing out to Internazionale in the final of this competition in 2010. For all his gushing compliments, the sly fox in Heynckes is plotting a route to redemption, and Chelsea will hardly appreciate the funny side should he succeed.

The first time I saw Andrea Pirlo was on a cold and fog-shrouded November evening in Monza in 2000, when he was a member of the Italy Under-21 team sent out to confront Howard Wilkinson’s England selection. Only 11 minutes had been played when the referee abandoned the match but since that night Pirlo’s quality has illuminated every ground on which he has played, and none more so than Juventus‘s new stadium, where he and his team-mates celebrated the Serie A championship on Sunday.

A byword for graceful creativity, Pirlo has been the most influential midfield player in Europe this season, bar none. Last summer he left Milan, his home for 10 glittering years in which, mostly under Carlo Ancelotti, he won two European Cups, two Uefa Super Cups, one Fifa Club World Cup and two Italian league titles, and where he had intended to finish his career. But Massimiliano Allegri, Ancelotti’s latest successor, wanted to install a different sort of influence in the position Pirlo had made his own, at the base of midfield: someone more physical, more aggressive, such as Mark van Bommel or Massimo Ambrosini.

A one-year extension was the best Milan could offer when Pirlo’s contract expired. The player reckoned that, at 32, three more years would be about right. Milan declined his suggestion and probably no greater misjudgment has been made since Real Madrid sold Claude Makélélé to make room for David Beckham. Once it became known that Pirlo was on the market, Juventus snapped him up. Their new coach, Antonio Conte, himself a former international midfield player of great distinction, saw Pirlo as the foundation of the side he was building to go with the club’s new home.

Last September the stadium was inaugurated with a stylish gala. Following the speeches and the presentation of great figures associated with the club’s history, from Giampiero Boniperti to Edgar Davids, a game took place between Conte’s new team and Notts County, the current representatives of the club who, back in 1903, sent Juventus a set of the black and white striped shirts in which they have played ever since.

When you think of all the famous clubs who would have happily accepted such an invitation, the Barcelonas and Manchester Uniteds and Bayern Munichs, this was a gesture of great historical sensitivity on the part of Andrea Agnelli, Juve’s 36-year-old president, the fourth member of his family to hold the post. It came in response to a tentative call from Jim Rodwell, Notts’s chief executive, wanting to ask Juventus to help mark this year’s 150th anniversary of the world’s oldest professional football club. Certainly, Agnelli responded, but why don’t you join our celebrations first?

And so it came to pass that the players and officials of a club in the third tier of the English game found themselves on a private jet and in a five-star hotel, all at the expense of hosts for whom their ancestors had done a small favour more than a century earlier. For that, as much as for anything else, I reckon Juventus fully deserve their success in recapturing the Serie A title, the reward for a deed of outstanding dignity and generosity.

Others will conclude that Juve’s success in remaining unbeaten throughout the entire league season was more to do with the quality of Pirlo’s passing. As he did for year after year in Milan’s colours, the newcomer made himself constantly available to his team-mates, always there to receive the ball and move it on in the most relevant direction. He was compass and metronome rolled into one, and he did not get injured or suspended.

As the very promising Conte showed the extent of his tactical imagination by shuffling his team’s formation from an initial 4-2-4 to 4-1-4-1, then to 4-2-3-1, and finally to an alternation between 4-3-3 and 3-5-2, Pirlo remained the keystone, utterly reliable and seemingly ageless. Only the colour of the stripes had changed.

Pirlo began his career as a classic No10, an attacking midfielder in the mould of Gianni Rivera or the young Roberto Baggio. The role did not quite suit him and it was while he was on loan from Internazionale, his first big club, back to Brescia, where he had started out, that the veteran coach Carlo Mazzone identified a new, deeper position from which he could direct the play. He became what Italians call a regista. Not having a word for it, we borrow a term from American football: the quarterback. Xabi Alonso and Paul Scholes are pretty good exponents but no one in recent times has come close to Pirlo’s calm mastery and next month he will be a key figure in Cesare Prandelli’s Italy at the Euro 2012 finals.

And so on Wednesday, four days before their team conclude a highly successful season with an appearance in the Coppa Italia final against Napoli, Agnelli and his fellow directors will open their new club museum, located in the Juventus Stadium (which really deserves a more resonant name). Among their guests will be Ray Trew, Notts County’s owner, who rescued the club from their latest flirtation with oblivion two years ago, and Jim Rodwell. With their own anniversary functions already under way, the pair will be hoping to bring back news of a return fixture with the new champions of Italy before the start of next season. Imagine it: Andrea Pirlo at Meadow Lane. Just as long as the Trentside fog holds off …