For the second year running the European season for Chelsea starts in August. Club historian Rick Glanvill and club statistician Paul Dutton are ready for the chance to claim silverware…
TALKING POINTS
'He's done it!!' was how Sky Sports' Martin Tyler unforgettably announced Didier Drogba's cool, incalculable penalty stroke. 'The greatest night in the history of Chelsea Football Club! European Champions! They've beaten Bayern in their own backyard!'
His colleague Gary Neville immediately announced: 'It can never get better than this for English football, in this season, the most incredible season. The 19th of May 2012; FIFA, UEFA - stop football!'
Thankfully, although the Blues' quest for the 'holy grail' was finally achieved, the sport did continue and the two combatants from that evening find themselves at Europe's top table once more. This time it is on neutral soil, rather than 'Unsere stadt, unser stadion', as Bayern proclaimed at their Allianz Arena home. But will it, again, be Chelsea's 'pokal'?
KEY STATGerman teams have featured in seven previous Super Cups, losing all of them.
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Manuel Neuer, the beaten goalie in Munich, has already said he has vengeance on his mind. Had Chinese philosopher Confucius been a sports psychologist, he would not doubt have reminded the German: 'Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.'
Better, surely, to treat this as a higher status Community Shield with a prestigious title at the end of it for the winner and little shame for the runners-up: more about kudos than Corleone.
It's one of those finals where the qualifying and the postscript are more important than the showpiece itself. Hence the emphasis is likely to be on markers for the future and sideshows. Guardiola versus Mourinho, German versus English football, markers for the Champions League as UEFA's second and third seeds square up.
Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho met 11 times as coach of Barcelona and Real Madrid. Guardiola won five to Jose's two, although Mourinho's Inter eliminated Barça 3-2 on aggregate in the 2009/10 Champions League semi-finals
In four matches against Guardiola's Barcelona between 2009 and 2012 Chelsea won one, drew three and lost none. He took over Bayern from Jupp Heynckes, who masterminded last season's Wembley victory over Dortmund. Although 'FC Hollywood' are currently top of the Bundesliga, their defeat by the same deadly rivals in the German Super Cup last month raised eyebrows, particularly over some of Guardiola's tactical manoeuvres.
Still, last season's Champions League winners Bayern are the bookmakers' favourites to retain their title and have been drawn in Group D along with CSKA Moscow, Man City and Plzeñ of the Czech Republic.
Chelsea's Group E features familiar faces in Schalke, struggling in the first breaths of the Bundesliga season, along with Basel and Steaua Bucharest, beaten in last season's Europa League, and therefore part of the reason we are in Bohemia this evening.
The Super Cup is played between the winners of the Champions League and Europa League. Prague will be the second Super Cup venue since the competition became a one-off final in 1998 and moved to Monaco, its base for 15 seasons.
Tonight's venue, the Eden Arena (picture below), opened in 2008 and is the home ground of Slavia Prague with a capacity of 20,800. The 2014 Super Cup will be played at the 26,800-seater Cardiff City Stadium and 2015 will be at the Lokomotivi Stadium, Tbilisi, which holds around 27,200.
English teams have contested the Super Cup on 14 occasions, winning seven and losing seven. Overall in UEFA competitions there have been 12 Anglo-German finals and only two German winners.
AC Milan (5) and Barcelona (4) have won the UEFA Super Cup on the most occasions.
Last five UEFA Super Cups
2008 - Zenit St Petersburg 2-1 Manchester United
2009 - Barcelona 1-0 Shakhtar Donetsk (aet)
2010 - Atlético Madrid 2-0 Inter
2011 - Barcelona 2-0 Porto
2012 - Atlético Madrid 4-1 Chelsea
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