Forget about everything else, it’s about the Champions League for Pep
WHEN it comes to Pep Guardiola I’m struggling to get my head around the fact that, for all the incredible, super-rich clubs he’s managed, it’s almost a decade since he reached the Champions League Final.
Honestly, it seems incomprehensible, impossible to me that anyone who has been in charge of Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City in the past nine years, hasn’t once got past the semi-final stage, let alone won it.
He will want to add another trophy in the Carabao Cup final this weekend, but he won’t actually give a monkey’s about it really because his reputation is almost riding on him getting to the final of the biggest prize this season.
The title is over and Guardiola won’t be giving it a second’s thought now. He won’t be picking teams to win league games, because it will be all about being strongest in Europe.
No doubt he wants to win it. For himself, for the club, and
also so he can stick two fingers up at UEFA for the ban City have been slapped with after their financial issues.
He’s a top-class manager, no doubt. Crazily intense it seems – from the outside at least – but with some clear thinking on the game and an immaculate tactical plan based on the best players available in world football. And that’s what he has at City right now.
He also had it at Bayern and Barca. Yet with each of those two clubs, after winning the trophy in 2011 he never got past the semis again. Which is almost criminal.
City are good enough, no doubt. But you wonder if it has become an obsession now for him, and he’s running tactical rings around himself.
Against Real Madrid in midweek, he came up with a clever plan, playing Jesus out on the left and operating without a centre forward as such. I reckon he wanted to keep the game tight and that gave him numbers in midfield to bottle it up.
It’s true, they played well in that system – but they still ended a goal down. Only then did he switch it back to his more usual line up, and with Raheem Sterling inspiring the team, and Kevin de Bruyne freed-up to influence the game more, they got the two goals for victory.
So even though I admired how they played earlier on, it still smacks slightly of being a tiny bit too clever – because the usual line up produced the best results.
I think Real are not all that this season. They have problems and you could see they were very ordinary for long stretches of that game. So even though it was a big win, there will be tougher challenges ahead.
Guardiola knows that. He knows his side haven’t been quite at their best this season, largely because he’s been without Laporte for much of it. And of course, he’s out now for at least a month.
That’s pressure then. Can they defend well enough to progress against the likes of Bayern, Juve or Liverpool? If the ban is upheld it means it’s the last chance for a couple of years to win it, so that cranks up the pressure too.
When I was at Liverpool the first time around, we had a great team and did well in Europe but always stumbled, never getting beyond the semi-final stage. I think we lacked something, had that fraction missing at that level, and if Guardiola’s run continues, then you have to wonder if there is something missing with him too.
Maybe he just wants it too much. Maybe he’s just unlucky.
Whatever the answer, it will be an obsession. But saying all that, this weekend City will still be overwhelming favourites to win the cup, and it doesn’t matter what trophy it is, it’s always nice to get one on the board for the season. It would just be nicer – far nicer, and massively important for Guardiola – if that trophy was the Champions League.