When the Bayern bosses last replaced Julian Nagelsmann with Thomas Tuchel, they might also have been thinking about his Champions League coup against Pep Guardiola in the 2021 final. April 11, 2023/9 p.m., live in the ticker and can be heard at sportschau.de) to Manchester City with Guardiola.
Must – or rather may? The fact that there is hardly a tougher sporting challenge at the moment has just been proven by the 7-0 victory of the Citizens in the round of 16 second leg against RB Leipzig with five goals from Erling Haaland. But on closer inspection, the coach is something of a beacon of hope – for Bayern.
Many fans and experts regard Guardiola as the best coach in the world alongside Jürgen Klopp, Carlo Ancelotti, José Mourinho, Zinédine Zidane and perhaps even Tuchel. And he has also coached the best teams in the world: FC Barcelona from 2008 to 2012, FC Bayern from 2013 to 2016 and then Manchester City.
His record is outstanding: he has won 32 titles with these clubs, and he has also won the Champions League. Twice even: 2008/09 and 2010/11. Since then, however, he has been waiting an amazing twelve years for the next crowning achievement in the premier class, neither Bayern nor City has he led to the highest level of European football. There are various theories as to why this is so. One has to do with the fact that Pep Guardiola always had very special coaching ideas in special games that did not bring the desired success.
Catastrophic coaching mistake in the final
Guardiola made the most obvious and probably worst coaching mistake of his premier class career in the 2021 final, against Tuchel of all places. The two were friends from their time together in the Bundesliga. In Munich, the two met in a restaurant and used salt and pepper shakers to recreate tactical versions of the football game. Against the clear outsiders Chelsea, who lagged far behind Man City in the Premier League, Guardiola then threw the winning tactics of the entire season overboard in the final.
He left his starting six in Rodri and Fernandinho on the bench, played up front without the nines Gabriel Jesus and Kun Aguero and wanted to start Chelsea high with a total of five attacking midfielders. As a result, he completely sacrificed the center, had no penetration up front, no protection in front of the defense and invited Chelsea to counterattack – Kai Havertz shot the Blues to triumph.
Also badly beaten with Bayern
Guardiola didn’t really admit this mistake afterwards, saying: “I tried my best. It was the best line-up I could do.” He had handled it differently in Munich. When he fell 1-0 and 4-0 to Real Madrid with Bayern in the semi-finals in 2014, Pep admitted he was “doing things that I didn’t feel. It’s all my fault that day.” Allegedly, Guardiola’s biographer Marti Perarnau later wrote, the team persuaded him to play more like under Jupp Heynckes. Philipp Lahm was spokesman alongside Thomas Müller.
The coach changed his system to a 4-2-3-1 with Toni Kroos and Bastian Schweinsteiger in central defensive midfield, Lahm switched to right-back and Thomas Müller to ten. Bayern then had no control in the center, Real kept getting past Kroos and Schweinsteiger with quick switching games, and Bayern also defended the set pieces wrong – Sergio Ramos was supposed to be passed in the room, which completely failed.
Failed with City at Lyon
Guardiola’s tactics were also unsuccessful against FC Barcelona in 2015, when the coach tried to slow down Barca’s 4-3-3 with the attacking full-backs with a completely unfamiliar 3-5-2: Bayern were eliminated again in the semifinals (0:3 and 3:2).
Five years later, Guardiola looked set to meet Bayern with Manchester City in the semi-finals, but failed sensationally in the last eight against Olympique Lyon. Guardiola had once again changed the basic order, his team seemed insecure, and the Catalan admitted a little defiantly and not sounding too convinced when asked: “We lost. So the plan wasn’t good.”
“We don’t need the philosopher here”
Guardiola has often received criticism from the media after such games, especially in England the fuse is short. But he always had full support in his clubs, at least that’s how it looks to the outside world. One of the very few players, probably the only one, who dared to publicly blaspheme Guardiola’s cerebral, brooding approach is, who else, Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
In 2011 in Barcelona, the self-proclaimed “God” recommended that his boss throw Pep out “have no balls and shit my pants in front of Mourinho…”. Zlatan concluded: “We don’t need the philosopher here. The dwarf and I are perfectly fine.” The dwarf was Lionel Messi, the philosopher is now making his next attempt at his third title in the Champions League against FC Bayern.
