Mischief seldom needs a second invitation into the preambles for Real Madrid against Bayern Munich in the Champions League, and, sure enough, even the distinguished president of the German club was happy to open the mind games.

“From what I read, Madrid have a lot of problems,” noted Franz Beckenbauer. “I think we must be the favourites.” Must be? From what Madridistas might read in their papers, or glimpse as they scrutinise the Bundesliga table, Tuesday’s visitors to the Bernabeu have plenty of difficulties of their own.

Madrid against Bayern will never be anything but heavy-weight, but this meeting of Spain and Germany’s preeminents is a match between fourth place in the Bundesliga and third in La Liga, at least as they were going into the weekend. They bear similar symptoms of disorder, an anxiety always likely to turn mind games into something rather less cerebral. With Madrid-Bayern, they tend to.

Three seasons ago, Madrid’s Roberto Carlos picked up a Uefa ban for whacking Munich’s Martin Demichelis in the face. Two years earlier, Bayern’s Hasan Salihamidzic guaranteed for himself a lifetime of jeers from Madrid crowds for telling everybody who cared to listen that Real players “had shit their pants”, in the first leg of a tie won by Madrid.

So it goes back. Bayern beat Madrid in the semis in 2001; Madrid beat Bayern in the semis in 2000, the climax of an extraordinary saga of intimacy in that year’s Champions League: the teams had played each other four times by May, Bayern scoring 10 goals against Madrid and still ending up watching Real lift the prize. Bayern’s Oliver Kahn felt especially piqued, and his refusal to exchange shirts with his opposite number, Iker Casillas, has also entered the litany of grudges.

Scroll back to the 1980s, and the tackles were cruder and so were the gestures. The Madrid winger Juanito picked up what was effectively a ban from European football for what remained of his career after landing his studs on the head of Lothar Matthäus. In the same tie in 1987, the Bayern defender Klaus Augenthaler agitated the Bernabeu crowd when celebrating a goal by pointing his two index figures from the top of his head, imitating a bull, Spain’s national symbol.

Beckenbauer would have winced at the possible consequences. The last time the Kaiser played in a Bayern team at Madrid, on the way to the German club’s third successive European Cup in 1976, a spectator invaded the pitch and attacked Gerd Muller. “It’s two great clubs with a lot of pride at stake and a huge desire to win titles,” says Beckenbauer. “That’s why these games are so charged. Off the field, Bayern and Real Madrid are good friends. A lot gets said around these matches and perhaps at times there are a few misunderstandings.” Beckenbauer, whose odyssey through the world game has just taken in a vice-presidency of Fifa to add to his World Cup triumphs as a player, coach and organiser, treads down most of his memory lanes with diplomatic aplomb.

It seemed appropriate to ask him about a particular chapter of his career that Madrid’s most famous footballer is about to repeat. Where David Beckham goes in June, Beckenbauer was heading 30 years earlier, with much the same mission: as a player first, and as an ambassador, as a catalyst for the game of football in the United States.

Beckenbauer joined New York Cosmos in 1977, and his adventure there would be a long one. He, and colleagues such as Pele, gave football in America an unprecedented visibility. They appeared to enjoy themselves, too, on the evidence of the recent film Once in a Lifetime. And although the financial bubble around Cosmos, in particular, and the then North American Soccer League would burst, Beckenbauer outlasted most of the fabled footballers who had been lured there from Europe and South America. He spent five seasons in New York.

Yes, he could see points of comparison with his journey and Beckham’s expedition to the Major Soccer League, whose Los Angeles Galaxy the former England captain will join when his Real Madrid contract expires at the end of the season. There was a certain fit, Beckenbauer suggested, with Beckham’s contracting himself to California. “Foot-ballers now are part of a different society,” said Beckenbauer. “And David Beckham gets treated like a movie star in any case. It’s perfect for him to go to Los Angeles.” But was Beckham — recalled to the Madrid first team last weekend after a month of absence imposed by a coach, Fabio Capello, who objected to one player being committed to a future elsewhere while still on Madrid’s staff — easing up too soon going to the States?

“It would be wrong to go there thinking it is an easy league,” Beckenbauer advised. “It’s not actually a bad league, you know; he’ll have to go over there and do his job, put in his best performance.”

On the evidence of his come-back, and a goal on his first reappearance since Capello’s freeze on Beckham thawed, echoes of the former England captain’s best performances can still be summoned. Beckenbauer’s were when he made his Atlantic crossing. He was 31 years old then. Beckham will have just turned 32 when he hits LA. And in the late 1970s, Beckenbauer was still in demand for his national team.

Beckenbauer was not about to board the “Beckham for England” bandwagon, though he did point out how times had changed. Back in the late 1970s, he explained, “there was a regulation in the German FA at the time that forbade any German player outside the Bundesliga for playing in the national team. It’s different now of course.

“But for Beckham the most important thing is that I think it’s fair to make life a little bit easier for himself. He’s coming to the end of his career and in America he can play three, four or maybe five years more. And, you know, he did a lot for football and as captain of England. He has put in a lot of effort.”

Fitness permitting, Beckham should keep his place in the Madrid team for Tuesday; Owen Hargreaves is expected to start for a Bayern team still realigning under the management of Ottmar Hitzfeld. Two-and-a-half years after leaving Bayern, Hitzfeld’s return to the club still has a temporary look to it, although no more loose than the hold that Capello frequently appears to have on the Madrid job halfway through a season of stuttering form, some stupefying football and a strategic volte-face, such as that over Beckham, almost every other week.

As Beckenbauer was quick to point out, the long drought of success at Madrid sits badly with the club’s image of itself. “I doubt there’s a team anywhere still having more appeal to the public having gone three years without winning anything,” he said. “The two sides are pretty close in terms of strength, but I think the fact that the first leg is in Madrid makes us the favourites.”

The return will take Madrid for the first time to the new Allianz Arena, where the Bayern president likes the close proximity of fans to the pitch. At Munich’s Olympic stadium, they were kept more distant by the athletics track. “That second leg is going to be very hard, and intimidating for Real Madrid,” added Beckenbauer.

But the Bernabeu for Madrid-Bayern brings it own special theatre too. Some Madridistasbehind Kahn’s goal will doubtless welcome him with bananas, as they usually do on account of what they regard as the goalkeeper’s simian appearance and gait. Kahn has long learned the Spanish for “Snowflake”. From the Bernabeu stands, the word will be bellowed at Kahn. Snowflake is the name of a late, famous albino gorilla who used to live at Barcelona zoo.

TV match

Real Madrid v Bayern Munich Tuesday, Sky Sports Xtra, 7.30pm, kick-off 7.45pm