Sammy Kuffour is the defensive rock with which Bayern Munich plan to blunt Manchester United

Number 51 S?bener Strasse on an everyday weekday in Munich. The headquarters of the European champions is open to the public. Those interested in seeing Owen Hargreaves win the training-ground sprints are down by the practice pitch. Those interested in more traditional Bavarian recreations are up in the bar, watching Bayern train from an upstairs balcony and having a tall beer for their elevenses.

On the edge of the stage below, some injured superstars are at various stages of recuperation; jogging or stretching, but always strutting.

Only when the practice finishes do you find out who the true local heroes are. Sammy Kuffour takes the longest time to pass the seven or eight yards between the pitch and the sanctum of the shower-room: longer than Stefan Effenberg, Mehmet Scholl or Oliver Kahn. A disabled child wraps his arms around Kuffour’s neck as soon as he has left the field. No autograph requests, no chat, just a bear hug that only a blushing father can eventually unlock. The kid is feverishly excited; Kuffour gives him a huge smile, a pat on the head and lets the child hang around him like a necklace until the lock is broken. Kuffour looks genuinely touched.

It is easy to see why the fans like Samuel Osei Kuffour. He wears his heart on his sleeve. When Bayern lost that most dramatic European Cup final of recent memory, conceding a one-goal lead against Manchester United in the dying moments, the images that stayed in the mind were of the losers: Lothar Matth?us tugging off his silver medal as soon as he’d been handed it, but before that, Kuffour’s tears, and his frenetic, wild thumping of the Nou Camp pitch.

Even two-and-a-half years later, with two Champions League wins over United under his belt since and a winner’s medal in the same competition to ease the hurt, he does not much like to see the television pictures of those famous minutes — the Sheringham goal, the Solskjaer winner, the crazed Kuffour catharsis.

He can talk about it now, acknowledging that any meeting between Bayern and United, like Tuesday’s, will always take people down memory lane, and they will want to hear again about the events of May 26, 1999. “I was just thinking, ‘This is what God wills, and you have to give them the credit’,” he recalls of how he felt after the final whistle. “But at the time I thought, ‘Only God knows why this has happened’. We had done our best, everybody saw that. We had hit the crossbar, and they had been lucky even to equalise.” By all accounts, Bayern’s party after the night was a good deal more raucous than United’s, simply because the German team’s players were still high on their sense of utter disbelief and adrenaline. But for Kuffour there was no rocking ’n’ rolling into the early hours. He is a prayer ’n’ gospel man, who takes his instructions first from above and second from Ottmar Hitzfeld, the Bayern coach, “a real gentleman, a nice guy who talks to you as a person”.

Kuffour seems a personable man, too. But the fans warm to him not just for his charisma and sincerity, but because he and Bayern go back a long way, to 1993 when they recruited him as an 18-year-old from Torino, who had spotted him in the traditional bargain-hunt of a scouting trip to his native Ghana. Kuffour grew up dreaming of following “George Weah, Roger Milla and all the guys who made it from Africa in European football, but as a defender”. Bayern saw the promise when Kuffour played for Ghana at the 1992 Olympics. Once on their books, he was loaned to Nuremberg and began to establish himself in the Munich first-team in the late 1990s. Briefly out of favour after he was seen dining with Barcelona representatives earlier this year, Kuffour has become the recognised totem of Bayern’s defence. And defending is what Bayern do better than anybody. However Hitzfeld perms his rearguard, it looks like a brick wall. Last season, before Bayern blunted the sharp attacking edges of United and Real Madrid in the knockout section of their European Cup success, they switched between 3-5-2 and 4-3-3. Then in the summer they sold the outstanding centre-half Patrik Andersson, only to set a Bundesliga record by conceding a mere four goals in the first 12 games of this league season.

What’s the secret? “We have had different systems over the past few years,” explains Kuffour. “When Matth?us was still here, he had his role, going forward out of defence and giving his passes from deep, while I would play next to him and Thomas Linke, the other central defender, would do man-marking. Andersson played as a libero with two other central defenders. Now we’re a flat back four, which is working well. We keep a good shape and we’re speaking a lot to each other. That’s really important.”

Manchester United’s manager, an admirer of Kuffour, would say an “amen” to that. It’s good to talk. Jaap Stam should have communicated more, Sir Alex Ferguson has suggested. In fact, there are a number of qualities in Bayern’s defending that United would envy at this stage in their season. The left-back, Bixente Lizarazu, subject of a United bid during the summer, is one. The ease with which a new centre-half, Robert Kovacs, has slotted in next to Kuffour is another.

Kuffour’s case for the defence extends beyond the back four. Kahn, the goalkeeper, can bark out orders as loud as any man, and, says Kuffour, “the defensive midfield players have been strong”. They include Hargreaves, the young England international who has had a fine autumn for his club. “Owen does so much running and he’s so quick,” he says.

Bayern’s frailties? A side missing the injured Jens Jeremies, Scholl and possibly Effenberg, who is touch-and-go to continue his return from long absence on Tuesday, ought to be a very weakened team indeed. All three, though, have missed most of the season so far, a season characterised by pace-setting at home and a strong first-phase showing in the Champions League. “It’s down to the strength of our group of players,” says Kuffour of their understudies.

Enough eulogy. United should be the strongest opposition Bayern have faced since beating Valencia to win the European Cup in May. But these days Ferguson’s team play Bayern without the psychological advantage of that heady night in the Nou Camp.

“The 1999 final is forgotten,” says Kuffour. “We had our revenge by beating them twice in the quarter-final last season, and that was a great feeling against players like Beckham and Giggs. Against United, you always have to show your class.”