Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Pep’s Holy Grail is the Champions League... and he really has to win it this season
IS PEP Guardiola one of the all-time great coaches? Absolutely. Is he under a bit of pressure this season? Absolutely.
I’m not for the life of me saying his job’s on the line. What I’m saying is the owners of Manchester City brought him in to win the Champions League.
And he’s not looked even close to doing that so far.
So there’s the pressure – and it won’t necessarily come from the owners – but from Pep himself.
It seems incredible given the clubs he’s been at, but he hasn’t won the Champions League since 2011. That’s eight years and counting, and that will hurt.
In that time, he’s been at three of the richest and most powerful clubs in the world, and hasn’t even made the final. City haven’t even got close to winning it, and that’s mad really.
He needs to win it, definitely. This season too, or the narrative that he’s got a mental block in Europe will gain even more momentum and start to feel like there’s actually some truth in it.
I don’t buy that for a second by the way. It’s not a mental block, but it IS very unusual, looking at the teams he’s had. Barca, Bayern and City – probably each of them was the best in Europe when he managed them.
City are, I have to admit, a bit baffling to me. Bayern were battered by Real Madrid in 2014, and the same again by Barca in 2015, but City haven’t even got beyond the quarter-final.
You can tell he’s obsessed with it. Watching the documentary footage, I sensed that’s where his focus on Liverpool comes from, because those 19 minutes at Anfield when City were blown away in the first leg of the quarter-final in 2018 were a seismic shock.
There’s obviously a hell of a lot of bad luck involved – that ‘goal’ in last season’s quarterfinal against Spurs ruled out by VAR was cruel – but I do think there’s an element of Pep giving it too much focus,
and trying too hard. Maybe his best chance is to avoid drawing an English club this year…but the reality is, they’re so strong, he’s probably going to have to beat at least one of Liverpool, Chelsea or Spurs to win it.
That’s where English clubs are at now. They all now have such strong squads they can finally juggle the demands of the most competitive league in Europe and the challenge of playing Europe’s best clubs.
Liverpool proved that last season, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they reach a third final in three years.
If there’s a team who can stop my two former clubs, then I’ve got an outside bet for you, at decent odds.
I’m going for Atletico Madrid. In Diego Simeone they’ve got a manager who knows how to get to the final (he actually beat Pep’s Bayern in the semi in 2016).
His style of play is suited to Europe, and they’ve invested a lot of money in talented players this summer.
He’s another manager who will haunt Guardiola. There’s a growing list of them, even more for him to obsess about.
But Pep’s one of the best there has ever been… and surely his Champions League blank over the past eight years can’t continue. Can it?
There’s been bad luck... but it’s now eight years of failure and counting