Pep Guardiola, 'The Philosopher', thinks a lot about things. According to his critics, too much. His game plans are always totally sophisticated, he takes care of every little detail: how to direct the pressure, what complementary movements his forwards must make to create spaces, in which areas the midfielder must appear in order to receive the ball comfortably and do damage with a vertical pass, how the full-backs and central defenders should maintain vigilance... Depending on the rival and the external conditioning factors, the guidelines are adapted. Something that none of the champions of the last decade has needed to do to succeed. Perhaps Guardiola's detractors are partially right. Perhaps football is simpler, and rethinking things over and over again ends up playing against it.
The coach left FC Barcelona in 2012. A team that, with interpreters of the level of Xavi Hernández, Andrés Iniesta or Leo Messi, he raised to previously unsuspected heights. An overwhelming choral game. The monopoly of possession made victory an almost inevitable consequence. However, already in the city of Barcelona he began to suffer from that illness that would accompany him until more than a decade later. He tyrannized Spanish football and won two Champions Leagues, but with a bittersweet taste, because taking into account the level reached by that generation, there could have been four.
José Mourinho's Inter Milan in the 2010 semi-finals and Roberto Di Matteo's Chelsea in 2012 were the perfect villains, the antagonists who prevented, in a way that is difficult to explain, that the most dominant team in the world won four Champions Leagues consecutive. After leaving Barcelona and spending a sabbatical year in New York, Guardiola chose to take the reins of Bayern Munich, a winning club where he has them. In his first year, he was crushed by Real Madrid in the semi-finals. He himself recognized that the problem had been thinking too much, changing from a 3-4-3 to a 4-2-3-1, to end up playing with a 4-2-4, in what he defined as "the biggest shit "of his life as a coach.
The following year it was reinforced with Lewandowski and Xabi Alonso, effectiveness above and balance in the middle to avoid a new disaster. However, he fell again in the semi-finals, against a Barça that he beat in the first leg, but against whom he was intimidated at the Camp Nou, with an unstoppable 'MSN'. In his third year, the end of the cycle, he experienced his most unlikely elimination. The team had reached its competitive peak, it had adapted to Guardiola's ideas and the coach to the Bavarian idiosyncrasy. Unfortunately for them, fate matched up in the semifinals, a cursed round for 'El Filósofo', the most dominant team with which he felt most comfortable being dominated: Diego Pablo Simeone's Atlético de Madrid.
A solitary goal from Saúl Ñíguez in the first leg and an unparalleled survival exercise in the second leg, against a Bayern that had 72% of possession, completed 33 shots and missed a penalty, took the 'mattresses' to the final of Milan. The clear demonstration that in Europe football superiority is not enough: mental superiority is required. Guardiola, with his mind always occupied with tactical schemes, triangular structures, strategic plays and elaborate ball exits, neglected the psychological section.
He arrived at Manchester City in 2016 to establish a ruthless dictatorship in the Premier League, as he had done before in La Liga and in the Bundesliga, and to raise the ceiling of domestic competition to another level. However, the Champions League maintained an indecipherable code for a football intellectual like Guardiola. The surprising Monaco of Kylian Mbappé, Radamel Falcao, Bernardo Silva and Fabinho eliminated them in the round of 16 in 2017 after scoring six goals, making clear the defensive shortcomings of a giant still under construction. The following year it was Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool, his staunch rival in England, who beat City in the quarter-finals.
In 2019, another unexplained elimination. Tottenham, much inferior to those of Guardiola, got into the semifinals after a massive error by Aymeric Laporte and a goal disallowed by Raheem Sterling in the last breath. The coronavirus arrived, an NBA-style bubble in Lisbon for the Champions League qualifiers, this time in a single match. City beats Real Madrid, but cannot beat Olympique de Lyon, who had not played since March 13 because Ligue 1 decided not to resume competition due to the pandemic. Again, Sterling was the protagonist, this time by missing a goal on an empty goal. Individual errors crucified Guardiola during his first four years in charge of the team.
What happened last season has nothing to do with these kinds of mistakes. There is simply no logical justification. And logic became the Catalan coach's worst enemy. Superior to Real Madrid in the first leg of the semifinals, Manchester City was unable to close the scoring and let Carlo Ancelotti's men remain in the tie. He paid for it in second-leg discount.
The Champions League is not governed by the natural rules of football, those that Guardiola wants to dominate and that give him terrible headaches year after year. In Europe, less can be more. It is not always necessary to think and rethink every detail, adapt to the characteristics of the rival. On paper, all plans are ideal, but on the pitch the mind and luck play a key and sometimes uncontrollable role. The one from Santpedor begins a new edition of the Champions League with the aim of deciphering, once and for all, the European enigma.
