The sequence lasts six minutes and seventeen seconds. It takes place inside a restaurant in Los Angeles, where diner Kate Matalini’s in Beverly Hills, and it was shot suddenly, without rehearsals and with three cameras so as not to waste a single second. It was the first time that Robert De Niro and Al Pacino shared the scene. And flat. And also a dialogue in which we all wanted to think that, in reality, they were talking about themselves and the admiration they felt for each other despite having learned in the same place, lived parallel careers and, above all, having disputed the throne of idolatry for so many fans. Michael Mann brought them together in heatthe film shot in 1995 that caused a strange amalgamation of mixed feelings in viewers. “You and I are sitting here like a couple of normal guys. You do what you do and I do what I have to do. And now that we’ve been face to face, if I’m there and I have to kill you, I won’t like it,” said police officer Vicent Hanna (Pacino) to the thief and murderer Neil McCauley (De Niro).
Guardiola and Luis Enrique will also meet on Wednesday at the Parque de los Prínipes. It is not clear who would be one or the other, but neither could be defined as a normal guy. Two ways of understanding the argument of the profession, but the same intensity – or severe pathology – to live it. It is true that it is not the first time they face each other in a match as coaches, but it happens now without that suffocating Barça trick that makes everything rare (Luis Enrique won those semis against Bayern in 2015 in which Messi asked Boateng to dance) . The first time, in short, that they will be able to show each other who they are without the sentimental ties of the past, of the house where they shared a tablecloth and bed between 1996 and 2001, a place that also specializes in destroying the best memories it creates.
Luis Enrique and Guardiola, who faced each other for the first time as players at the Bernabéu in 1991, are the two coaches most loved by Barça fans. Because of what they won and how they did it, also because of their firmness, so to speak, against Madrid. But also because of that premature departure that helps you miss the people you lost and mythologize the memories when you know that it is impossible to recover them. Stubborn in the idea, even when everything goes wrong – both are going through a bad moment in their teams -, they are the kind of suicides willing to lose games rather than the style itself. Interventionists by nature, Guardiola may have a little more sensitivity to know how far he can push than Luis Enrique, who if he had the choice would direct the games with a joystick. But both, as much or more than figures like Johan Cruyff, also owe their best years to a 170-centimeter guy born in Rosario.
Personal friends, also their families, say that when Laporta tried to convince the City coach to return to Barça, he told him to stop playing bagpipes and bring the Asturian back. There is no greater praise. Luis Enrique evoked in the fantastic You have no **** idea when and how he met Guardiola, whom he calls Pepino in the documentary. They met for a year at Bobby Robson’s Barça and became friends, forming a particular triangle with Luis Figo (Pep is the godfather of one of the Portuguese’s daughters). “Figo and I said that he was very heavy, that he was sick,” he said fondly in the series. “What can I say about Pep? “His approach to football is wonderful, as is mine,” he insisted this weekend. “Now, the Parc des Princes awaits us.” Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. in Paris, 90 minutes, exterior night, same shot and sequence.
