The calm before the Champions League final storm is upon us and in Part 4 of his 4 part Champions League series Soccer 365’s Jerrad Peters talks of the quiet and the rumblings we can expect on Saturday as game time gets closer.

By Jerrard Peters

Stop whatever you’re doing and just listen. Close your eyes for a moment or two and take a deep breath.

It’s wonderful, isn’t it—that silence. Almost out of place. It’s the last thing you’d expect, really, after all the hubbub and hype of the last few days. It’s a rare moment of quiet amid such hyper commotion.

It gets like this before a big match, before a Super Bowl or Game Seven or Champions League final. Everything that had to be said has been said; everything that had to be learned has been learned. We’ve heard press conferences, watched training sessions, found out what the players had for a night snack and which of them likes Red Bull and which of them has a Blackberry Playbook and which of them did what, when and where with Imogen Thomas.

CLICK HERE to read Part 1 in the Series - Giggs affair gives Ferguson questions to ponder
CLICK HERE to read Part 2 - The Favorite
CLICK HERE to read part 3 - Man United's Star - The Boss

There’s nothing left to say anymore, nothing left to analyze. There’s only quiet. That last bit of calm before the storm; the cold, dark night before the break of dawn.

Nothing left, except one important thing. The only thing we still don’t know, and won’t know until an hour or two before kickoff of the Champions League final at Wembley. We don’t know what the teamsheets will look like. It’s the final pre-game talking point.

Of course, we have a pretty good idea who Pep Guardiola will dispatch tomorrow. The Barcelona manager has used a consistent lineup all season and has rarely deviated in formation over his three years in charge of the club. Perhaps the only question on his mind concerns the fitness of Eric Abidal, who only recently returned to the squad after undergoing surgery to remove a liver tumour.

Abidal is tremendous asset to Barcelona, but his absence wouldn’t really change anything. One of Maxwell and Adriano could easily step into the left-back slot and the Barcelona rhythm wouldn’t miss a beat. Yes, Guardiola’s starting 11 is pretty much a given.

Not so for Sir Alex Ferguson. The United boss has a lot to think about before submitting his lineup tomorrow, and here’s guessing he’ll wake up in the morning without having reached a final decision. That said, his selection conundrum isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Most of his players are fully fit and in good nick, so he has only to decide which of them to send out, and in what formation.

Basically, Ferguson has two options. He can either play his best available squad, or he can shuffle the deck with an eye to stifling Barcelona, perhaps with a tactical surprise.

It won’t be an easy decision to make. United seemed to hit top gear when Ryan Giggs and Michael Carrick were paired together in the centre of midfield and Ji-Sung Park and Antonio Valencia were deployed out wide. The setup—a sort of 4-2-3-1—allowed Wayne Rooney to drift around at will and got the most out of lone striker Javier Hernandez in the process.

That team, with Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic, Patrice Evra and one of the Da Silva twins in defense, earned crucial results against Chelsea and Schalke in April and May, and it will take a compelling argument to force Ferguson to abandon it at this point.

But Lionel Messi is a pretty compelling argument. So too, for that matter, are Xavi, Sergio Busquets, Andres Iniesta, Pedro and David Villa. This Barcelona side is simply something United haven’t faced this season, and it might take a re-think for the Premier League champions to have a chance at victory.

Ferguson’s most obvious Plan B involves man-marking Messi. This would likely be a job for Rio Ferdinand, and it would possibly require another central defender in the team, such as Chris Smalling. This would give the former England captain a license to roam a little more than he otherwise would, and the jam-packed midfield that would result from this adjustment would help United stifle Xavi and Iniesta.

So the thinking goes, anyway. There’s really no proven formula for beating Barcelona. That’s why we can know the extent of their lineup and strategy while United plot a way to lessen its effectiveness.

An imperfect United will lose the Champions League final. Only a spot-on perfect one will have a shot. Just what that team will look like remains a mystery—the final mystery of a very, very big occasion.

Projected lineups

Barcelona: Valdes; D. Alves, Pique, Puyol, Abidal; Xavi, Busquets, Iniesta; Pedro, Messi, Villa.

Manchester United: Van der Sar; Smalling, Ferdinand, Vidic; Fabio, Carrick, Park, Evra; Valencia, Rooney; Hernandez.

Jerrad Peters is a soccer columnist and the author of We Call it Soccer: Understanding the World’s Most Popular Sport.