We’ve had another Champions League round of games and as usual it gave us some interesting things to debate, analyse and consider.

We all have played on many football pitches in our lives. Neighbourhood football pitches, muddy pitches, pitches we only dreamt about, pitches which took us a step forward, pitches to forget and pitches of hope and many more...Stadiums full of history and stories, filled with failures and legends, which have moulded our careers and have propelled us forward, sometimes without direction. Football offers no truce. It devours and forgets only to reinvent itself and start again.

The first time I saw Rafa Benítez in person was during an informal chat immediately after a game with a few fans of a group I was running at the time. The truth is none of the organisers of that meeting would have bet a penny that the coach would actually turn up. And not because, according to football practice, a person of his standing (he had been for some time one of the best coaches in the world) is usually inaccessible to the general public. No. He would have nothing to do with elitism. It was because he was known for never taking a break from work. And of course, straight after the match, it was understood that the first thing someone like him would do is go over the notes he had made during the 90 minutes, and the last thing he would do was to meet a group of over-enthusiastic interlopers. Therefore it was a surprise to see him appear at the agreed place and time.

Today I would like to talk a bit about the game I was at last night, Manchester City against Napoli and thanks to my technical staff and the TV we can also make a few comments about the other matches that completed the first week of the Champions League.

For some time I have been looking at the growth of the Bundesliga. These first few matches of the Champions League Group Stage, where English and German teams have played each other, have given me a chance to begin an analysis which I would like to continue.

First of all, thanks for all the contributions you have made. Some of you have brought up some very interesting points for discussion and I am thinking of writing some articles to give my opinion on the subjects.

My first impression, and whenever I have been asked this question I have been convinced of this, is that the Premier League is quicker and has bigger physical demands than the Spanish championship, and that La Liga is more technical and tactical.

Performance in collective disciplines is very different from what occurs in individual disciplines. In team sports is really complex to design plans and workout routines to improve analytically the sport man biological-functional system. This is certainly the approach that any coach should have before to make the planning. In a discipline where the continuous interaction of variables is present at all times, is not possible separately stimulate cognitive components with fitness or coordinative ones. Almost all tasks have to be planned taking into account the internal logic of the game.

The success of Uruguay in the recent Copa America was, in my opinion, a triumph of collective quality over the individual, where the whole was once again better than the sum of the parts. At the moment this has given us Argentinians a lesson. Try to be better as a group, leaving aside some of me for the common good. It sounds easy but it is difficult to achieve.

Barcelona v Manchester United, 3-1 Saturday 28.05.11

There was a lot of talk for days before this massive game played in London as is usual with such a big final. The styles were compared of Manchester United, much stronger physically and a more English style, and of Barcelona, with a pass and move style, as in the Spanish national team, which has as its spine the Barcelona players.