With a full house of league titles from Dutch, English, Spanish and now German football, Arjen Robben poses the biggest threat to Jose Mourinho's attempt to take Europe's top prize back to Inter Milan for the first time since 1965.
The Dutch winger with the powerful left foot has the ability to conjure up goals which turn losing situations into winnings ones. Now he is confident he will win European football's biggest prize for the first time despite that wealth of titles in four different countries.
"I have watched how this (Bayern) team has developed in recent weeks and months and this team is playing a very high standard of football," Robben said Thursday. "If you compare them a bit with Barcelona, they are still not at that level but we are well on the way to reaching Barcelona's level of play."
Robben's spectacular and timely strikes knocked out Fiorentina and Manchester United even though Bayern lost both second leg games on the night and advanced on his away goals.
If he is on target again on Saturday at a familiar Santiago Bernabeu stadium where he helped Real Madrid win the Spanish league title, that would mean stopping the title going to Mourinho, the manager he helped win two Premier League titles with Chelsea.
Apart from having strong connections with Mourinho, Robben and could be forgiven for telling Real Madrid it was wrong to let him go. But he dismissed that idea.
"I just want to say to the (Madrid) fans: thank you very much for two great years here," he said. "But now I'm with a different team.
"I feel very proud coming back here to Madrid again with a different team, but that's life. I think we have a very good team and we have played a lot of good games so that's why we are here. We have to enjoy ourselves now but we have to win on Saturday."
The fact that two such former European powerhouse teams are back in the final means that the English Premier League doesn't have a finalist for the first time since 2004. That's when Mourinho's Porto won the title by beating Monaco 3-0.
This season, Inter knocked out Chelsea and defending champion Barcelona, with Mourinho's tactic of stifling Barca's Lionel Messi by lining up two vastly experienced tacklers to crowd him out worked perfectly.
Now Mourinho has to do something similar to shackle Robben and stop him cutting inside onto his dangerous left foot.
The Portuguese manager stands on the brink of guiding Inter to its first triumph in the competition in 45 years. Although Inter twice won it when it was called the European Cup, it has twice been a runner up since then and has not been in the final since 1972.
Five Serie A titles in a row - two under Mourinho - have taken away some of the pain felt year after year of failure in the the top club competition in Europe.
An Inter victory on Saturday really would relieve that pain. But Robben is primed to start those Italian tears rolling again.
