I

t’s difficult to overemphasize the importance of Saturday’s UEFA Champions League Final for both Bayern Munich and Chelsea.

The losers will have endured a disappointing season by their own exalted standards, while the winners will be able to describe themselves as the best club in Europe, even if many of us know that isn’t the case.

Often the Champions League isn’t about the best team, or that which plays the best football. It’s more about which group of players can get the job done on the day, in whatever circumstances, and under whatever conditions prevail.

Both Bayern Munich and Chelsea have proven themselves eminently capable of doing just that, but Saturday’s encounter at the Allianz Arena may just be about who can handle the pressure better.

Bayern came off second best to Borussia Dortmund in this season’s Bundesliga, and were then trounced by the very same team in the German Cup Final. A campaign without silverware for the Bavarian club is almost unthinkable, while bagging Europe’s top prize will be seen as a tremendous achievement.

For Chelsea, with an FA Cup trophy already in the cabinet, the UCL title would be the icing on a cake that had all but lost its flavor in mid-season. We’ve been talking for weeks about Roberto Di Matteo auditioning for the Chelsea job, and his CV would be irresistible, surely, should he help to deliver a title that the club has never won.

90 minutes then, separate the two clubs from either glory or failure — it really is that simple.

It’s difficult to imagine which team is under the most pressure — the scale on which this aspect of the game is measured may even need to be recalibrated.

Bayern will be playing at home (the first time this has happened in a UCL Final), and while that may appear to present an advantage, with the advantage comes a weight of expectation that could prove to be debilitating.

Everyone in Munich expects Bayern to get the job done on home soil (where they have won 14 of their last 15 games in Europe) and nothing less will be countenanced. When players know that losing is not an option, nervousness is bound to ensue, and if Bayern are in the least bit tentative on Saturday, Chelsea have the instincts (and the machinery) to profit.

Having said that, Bayern’s humiliation at the hands of Dortmund may serve to eradicate any ideas of complacency Jupp Heynckes’ men may have had. Saturday’s match is their season — defining for the club, and maybe even one or two individual careers.

With suspensions galore, Chelsea will probably go into the game as underdogs, and that may suit
them well.

As if they need any encouragement to lie deep and soak it up (a tactic that was so effective against Barcelona in the semi-finals) they have the perfect excuse for doing just that, and have already proven to be effective on the counter-attack. Bearing in mind the defensive lapses in the German Cup Final, and a back line that Heynckes will have no option other than to reshuffle, Bayern’s focus will need to be sharp and immediate.

The sides have only met once before in Champions League history, and that was back in 2005 when Chelsea won 6-5 on aggregate in the quarterfinals.

Chelsea’s success was delivered on the power and pace of Didier Drogba, as indeed was the ball whenever possible, and he managed to terrorise the Bayern defence. No one would be surprised to see more of the same on Saturday, which puts extra responsibility on Bayern midfielders to track the runners for the knock-downs. In the absence of Luiz Gustavo (their only out and out holding midfielder) this may be a problem.

There are fascinating head to heads all over the park, but the fact remains that the game is far too close to call — so much so that you can get pretty decent odds on the match going through extra time and into penalties.

We’re in for our fair share of both agony and ecstasy at the Allianz Arena, but such is the nature of sporting contest. For every winner there has to be a loser; for every hero, there is generally a villain; and everyone will be hoping that it is not them.

It will be about bravery and the ability to handle the pressure for two clubs whose entire seasons will be determined by the result of just one game.

Catch Andrew Leci on SportsCenter every weekday on ESPN.