With a full house of league titles from Dutch, English, Spanish and now German football, Arjen Robben poses the biggest threat to Jose Mourinho’s attempt to take Europe’s top prize back to Inter Milan for the first time since 1965.
The Dutch winger who has the ability to conjure up incredible goals — has already done that to Fiorentina and Manchester United this campaign — will be Bayern Munich’s main man in tonight’s showpiece final. Now he is confident he will win European football’s biggest prize for the first time despite that wealth of titles in four different countries.
“I have watched how this (Bayern) team has developed in recent weeks and months and this team is playing a very high standard of football,” Robben said on Thursday. “If you compare them a bit with Barcelona, they are still not at that level but we are well on the way to reaching Barcelona’s level of play.”
Robben’s spectacular and timely strikes knocked out Fiorentina and Manchester United even though Bayern lost both second leg games on the night — they progressed on the away goals rule.
If he is on target again on Saturday at a familiar Santiago Bernabeu stadium where he helped Real Madrid win the Spanish league title, that would mean stopping the title going to Mourinho, the manager he helped win two Premier League titles with Chelsea.
Apart from having strong connections with Mourinho, Robben could be forgiven for telling Real Madrid it was wrong to let him go. But he dismissed that idea.
“I just want to say to the (Madrid) fans: “thank you very much for two great years here,” he said. “But now I’m with a different team.
“I feel very proud coming back here to Madrid again with a different team, but that’s life. I think we have a very good team and we have played a lot of good games so that’s why we are here. We have to enjoy ourselves now but we have to win on Saturday.”
The fact that two such former European powerhouse teams are back in the final means that the English Premier League doesn’t have a finalist for the first time since 2004. That’s when Mourinho’s Porto won the title beating Monaco 3-0.
This season, Inter knocked out Chelsea and defending champion Barcelona, with Mourinho stifling Lionel Messi’s abilities. Now Mourinho has to do something similar to shackle Robben and stop him from cutting inside onto his dangerous left foot.
The Portuguese manager stands on the brink of guiding Inter to its first triumph in the competition in 45 years. Although Inter twice won it when it was called the European Cup, it has twice been a runner up since then and has not been in the final since 1972.
