Who can break the Barca code

“No one has given us a hiding like that. It's a great moment for them. They deserve it because they play the right way and enjoy their football.” This was Sir Alex Ferguson's admission to the media after Pep Guardiola's Barcelona turned Manchester United into an admiring spectator at the Wembley in the Champions League final.

All the pre-match promise of attacking football from the United manager went up in smoke once Barcelona started dominating with its trademark one-touch passing.

There is not a club side anywhere in the world which could have coped with Barcelona's meticulous defending, relentless ball circulation and flourishes of individual brilliance. This is a team that simply can't stop running.

The challenge

With only a month away for the new season, the challenge for the managers across Europe would be “How to stop the mighty Barcelona”.

Can Ferguson or Jose Mourinho or Arsene Wenger crack “The Barca code” next season?

Though Wenger and Mourinho can boast of cracking the code last season, their sides were truly beaten when it mattered.

A look at the strategies of Rubin Kazan's Kurban Berdyey and former Chelsea boss Guus Hiddink may come in handy for the teams that face the Spanish champion next season.

When Berdyey was asked about the victory against Barcelona in the Champions League group stage encounter in 2009, he said: “I studied all Barcelona's games in the Spanish championship. The game against Valencia [a 0-0 draw] was the most helpful to understand them. I noticed that Xavi and Andres Iniesta almost never drop back to their own penalty box.

“This style of play in the midfield creates free space for shots from the middle range. Our midfielders were told to shoot on sight. It's also good to have a player in this area who constantly tries to hold the build-up of Barcelona's attack in the centre of the midfield.

“The Barcelona full-backs, Dani Alves and Eric Abidal, tend to play wide and leave some space in the centre. We were ready to organise our counter-attack through that area.”

The Russian side was also lucky on that day in finding the back of the net twice out of only three shots on target.

Tactics of fear

Hiddink employed “tactics of fear” in managing a goalless draw at the Camp Nou in the first-leg semifinals of the Champions League in 2009.

The master-tactician nullified Barca's free-flowing football by positioning John Obi Mikel and Michael Ballack deep in midfield and asking Michael Essien and Florent Malouda to take care of the wide players. His tactic was to limit Barcelona's rhythm as much as possible while looking to break quickly, with Malouda and Lampard supporting Didier Drogba.

The Chelsea players showed remarkable resilience to leave Barcelona shattered at the Camp Nou.

In the second-leg, Hiddink resorted to the old Catenaccio style with the blend of modern counter-attacking innovation.

He used two defensive midfielders in Essien and Ballack but allowed the Ghanaian to move forward on rare occasions to support Lampard and Drogba. Chelsea got the well-deserved lead when Essien fired in a long-ranger.

The tough defending followed by the swift counter-attacks continued until Iniesta's moment of magic in injury time, which ensured the Catalan side's entry into the final through the away-goal rule.

Hiddink's terrific strategy largely went unnoticed, but it is something that can be experimented by the managers facing Barcelona in the coming season.