When Thiago Alcântara was a kid, he had everything he needed at home – a ball, a table, some chairs and a World Cup winner. Born in Italy and raised in Spain, where the family arrived when he was three, the Bayern Munich midfielder’s parents are Brazilian: his mother was a professional volleyball player called Valeria Alcântara and his father was a footballer called Iomar do Nascimento who played for Valencia, Celta Vigo and Elche. You might remember Mazinho, as he was better known, rocking the baby alongside Bebeto and Romario at USA 94.

Bebeto’s son Mattheus was born two days before that Dallas afternoon, when they played Holland; Mazinho’s sons, Thiago and Rafinha, were three and one. On Wednesday night, 21 years on, they face each other in the first leg of the European Cup semi-final. “His heart will be divided,” Thiago says of his father, in the canteen at Bayern’s training ground. “He’ll have to get two scarves, cut them in half and sew them together, Barcelona one side, Bayern the other. But if it’s a conflict, it’s also a gift. Any dad would love this. I’m sure he’ll enjoy it.” Enjoy it. There’s something in Thiago’s choice of words that’s fitting. Asked who his idols were, he responds simply “I liked my dad”, and he talks about long conversations and fatherly advice from his “first coach”, but Mazinho was no pushy parent.

Instead, there was freedom and inspiration, guidance not obligation. Enjoy it. In a world where the discourse is dominated by battles, clashes and sacrifice, life and death, results alone, Thiago is different. Football is supposed to be fun. For him, it is.

“The best thing about having a footballer dad is seeing the game up close. You watch him train, then go home and practice what you’ve seen in the front room, rearranging the furniture. I put the table here, the chair there, and I’d dribble round them. They had cones, I had chairs,” Thiago recalls. “The downside is that when you’re young you know you have to be at least as good as your dad. But once your career begins properly you find your way.”

Thiago’s way is, well, Thiago’s way, distinctive and different. Mario Balotelli interrupted a touchline interview after his Spain debut – as fate would have it, in Bari – to declare him “the best”. And Karl-Heinz Rummenigge called him an “absolute genius”. His style is innate, and stems too from that sense of fun and enthusiasm. But that does not mean not competing or working. “If you have two great talents, the one that works will succeed,” he says.

“The games I enjoy most are the ones I finish exhausted and with knocks, but having played. Take Porto: we fought, ran and won, sure, but we also played football. It’s just not a question of fight, you have to play. Football is a competition to see who’s the best, not a battle. It’s not a war. When it ends, we’re still alive. You want to win above all, but you want to enjoy playing a good pass, for example. Football’s become more physical. I would have liked to have been born 10 or 20 years earlier, to enjoy football with the same commitment and desire, but without the toughness it has now.”

“By ‘toughness’, I mean that sense that you lose a big game and you’re killed for it; you win a big game and you don’t enjoy it,” he explains. “You learn from defeats, sure, but you should enjoy victories and want to experience that feeling again. This is a great sport, to be enjoyed and mastered. Basketball’s not easy, even though expressing yourself with your hands is simpler, so imagine expressing yourself with your feet, making people enjoy it. It’s there to be enjoyed, let’s make it beautiful.”

“Sometimes you watch matches and think ‘neither team wants the ball’. It’s ugly,” he says. “I’m definitely not [the same player], I’ve matured but it’s probably true that my idea is the same [as when I was a kid]: win, enjoy it. That’s still the joy of football for me: having the ball, touching it, passing, dribbling, scoring. Having the ball is fundamental.”

Pep Guardiola’s Bayern, then, are a natural fit. There once was talk of Manchester United. Was that a possibility? “Yes, but the real possibility was Bayern,” he says. Because of Guardiola? If he had stayed at Barcelona, would you? “Yes, probably, but I can’t change the past and I prefer to focus on now. You learn something new every day with Pep, a magnificent coach who transmits real passion.”

His commitment to a style, an expression of joy, makes the United option intriguing. Would he have suited English football? It is, after all, very different. Thiago smiles, responding in English, “box to box, no?”. Well, yes.

“Football’s football,” he replies. “It’s a question of learning. And if football wasn’t like that, it would be boring. I was lucky, my dad played in many different places and I saw different styles. Wouldn’t it be dull if everyone played like the Spanish, or the English or the Argentinians? In Italy they’re incredibly competitive [and] defend so well; in England it’s more direct; in France, it’s physical …”

And in Germany? Thiago talks about getting used to a quicker game, different spaces, about Guardiola fitting his methods to Germany, but his arrival was more about Bayern changing. Thiago, rarely a starter for Barcelona, keen to “express” himself, was due to lead the revolution. “Thiago oder nichts,” Guardiola had said. Thiago or no one. He signed in the summer of 2013 for €20m.

Thiago Alcântara left Barcelona for Bayern Munich in 2013 to rejoin manager Pep Guardiola. Photograph: Ricardo Ordonez / Reuters/Reuters

Against Eintracht Frankfurt in February 2014, Thiago had 185 touches, a Bundesliga record, but three knee ligament injuries have curtailed his progress. Now at last he has returned, and superbly. Astonishing against Porto, in the quarter-final second leg, he scored the opening goal.

“I preferred to be isolated during the injury, another city, another country. You want to be with your team-mates but it’s hard to be flat out on the treatment table while they’re out there,” he says, signalling the pitch through the window. “I feel good now. The problem is that after so long out the desire to play sometimes carries me on when my legs have gone. You have to be careful. A year later, you want to play every minute.”

Against Barcelona, especially. Against his brother too. Will he be going in hard on Rafinha? “We go in hard on everyone,” Thiago, 24, says. “Not to hurt them, but because we want the ball.”

The ball, always the ball. So what does he make of the constant debate around Barcelona’s style, their evolution towards a more direct game? There has been a nostalgia for what they were, echoed by this tie and the return of Guardiola. Not just Guardiola, Thiago too: writing in El País, Ramón Besa noted: “Thiago expresses what Barcelona could have been and Bayern want to be.”

For so long, that identity resided in Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta, but they’ve played together just four times this season. Iniesta’s form is superb after a difficult start, while Xavi is 35: this will be his last Champions League game at the Camp Nou. Thiago’s admiration is clear, even if their brilliance was once his obstacle.

“I’ve seen so many things from Xavi and Andrés,” he says, blowing out his cheeks. “Xavi gives a team oxygen. Andrés is more about skill, beating players. Andrés will be around for years, but it saddens me to think that I won’t be able to watch Xavi. He’s one of those that made Barcelona. Xavi is football.

“I’m more futbolero than my brother. He likes other things, like music. When I was small I’d sit with my dad and watch games together and talk about the games. I loved it, it’s my passion. I watched him too, and I watch my brother. I’ve watched Barcelona a lot because of him. And because they play nice football. Honestly, I think Barça play spectacularly well ....”

Leo Messi, particularly. Thiago laughs. “There’s nothing new I can say. He’s spectacular, incredible. He’s playing further from goal and he’s still scored 40 in the league. If he played in goal he’d score 25. There’s no comparison; he’s the best, a competitive animal. But just because you recognise that, just because you watch him and think ‘wow’, doesn’t mean that when he’s there in front of you, you won’t try to get the ball off him and play yourself.”