The manager has Barcelona in the blood but, as he prepares to meet them in the Champions League, the club’s rich history informs his plans for City

“It’s not what we wanted,” Txiki Begiristain admitted. Manchester City’s director of football was in Zurich for the Champions League draw, where he could not get a reception on his phone. There was no way of telling his manager the news: “Pep, we’re going back.” But by the time he realised, Guardiola was surely already aware and he probably always suspected as much anyway. On the morning of the draw back in Catalonia some of those closest to him had already predicted this; it was, they had said, inevitable.

This is nothing new, for Begiristain or for Guardiola. This will be the third time City have been to the Camp Nou in four seasons. The last time they were there, so was Guardiola. He was not yet City’s manager but he was still a Barcelona soci: up in the stand, he hid his face behind a scarf, delighting in the disbelief as LionelMessi nutmegged James Milner. A few weeks later he was back again as Bayern Munich manager, his reaction down on the touchline rather different as Messi snapped Jérôme Boateng’s hips in half.

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His first time as an opponent at the Camp Nou Guardiola admitted that was “not a normal game” and rightly predicted: “No one can stop Messi.” Now he must try again. Because he has been back once this game will be rather more low-key than that one but, as one member of staff at Barcelona’s San Joan Despí training ground put it this week: “It’s always a bit special when Pep comes.”

This is not just Guardiola and Begiristain, though; it is Ferran Soriano too, the former Barcelona vice-president. “It’ll be emotional. We have a lot of friends there,” Begiristain said. Most of them are anonymous members of staff, the connections multiple, shared friends and philosophies. There is something about City that means they just cannot avoid Barcelona, the club in whose image they are partly built.

Denis Suárez joined Manchester City at 17; now he is at Barcelona. Nolito joined Barcelona at 22; now he is at City. By his own admission his career owes most to two men who have coached him in two different teams, former team-mates who will occupy the touchline on Wednesday: Guardiola and Luis Enrique. This summer both wanted him. He chose City, just as Claudio Bravo did – Barcelona’s player on the morning of the draw, Barcelona’s opponent by the afternoon.

Bravo’s experience and the debate surrounding him reveals some of the shared ideas at the two clubs, fully embraced with the arrival of Guardiola at the Etihad – City’s revolution, if that is what it is to be, had felt a little unfinished until now; his arrival has been sought since the start.

Guardiola wanted Bravo (or, indeed, Marc-André ter Stegen) for much the same reason that Luis Enrique had wanted him: because, as well as being a goalkeeper who makes saves, he is a goalkeeper who makes his team play, just as Víctor Valdés was. Guardiola has explained the reasons but the debate continues and, for all that the concept has been more internalised in Catalonia, it is echoed on the other side of this game – now more than ever before.

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In last month’s Manchester derby, Bravo’s determination to play from the back almost cost City. Ter Stegen’s determination to do the same did cost Barcelona in their last game: two misplaced passes gave Celta Vigo two goals in a 4-3 win, making this their worst start in almost a decade, the debate heightening again. “It is my fault. We lost because of me,” Ter Stegen said. “But,” he added, “I won’t change my style completely” – not least because his manager does not want him to. After the derby Guardiola described Bravo as “exceptional”; after Vigo Luis Enrique insisted: “We won’t kill him for this. Barcelona’s goalkeeper always has to take risks.”

On Wednesday he will do so again. So, at the other end, will Bravo. If it seems to invite trouble, the way these two teams’ coaches see it, it invites them to play. This is the way they play, the gospel according to Johan Cruyff. His ideals underpin these clubs now, which is not to say they have always gone entirely unchallenged. Indeed, in Barcelona Cruyff stood at the heart of a debilitating civil war, which still echoes here and will on Wednesday, if quietly now. The divide still exists; some remain bitter towards Cruyff and towards Guardiola, his most determined disciple.

They are few, though: while some spat venom in Guardiola’s direction before his return last year, the belligerence baffling, virtually everyone else ignored them, grateful instead for what Guardiola built, what he represented, who he is: supporter, player, captain, ideologue, manager and now an opponent, faithful to those ideals but not, for one night only, the same club. In the end the reunion was as it should be: Guardiola was welcomed back and then beaten. The reaction this time will be even more “normalised”.

There was something telling in Jordi Cruyff’s remark as his father’s autobiography was published posthumously in London, Amsterdam and Barcelona this past week. “He’d say: ‘You have to die for people to love you,’” Jordi said, looking round the room in Barcelona. Some always did: Guardiola for a start, Begiristain too.

Guardiola told Donald McRae about Cruyff building a cathedral, “stone by stone”. Now he is trying to construct something similar in Manchester; the inspiration can be found in Catalonia and in Cruyff, its origins too. “Without him I would not be here for sure. I would not be Manchester City manager,” Guardiola said. And he would not be back again, where once he was a ballboy.