With Bayern Munich having fallen at the semi-final stage of the UEFA Champions League for the third consecutive season despite their domestic dominance, questions have emerged over the reign of Pep Guardiola at the club ahead of his summer departure.
In Germany, Guardiola’s side have been untouchable. However, given the talent at his disposal, is failure to reach even one Champions League final an acceptable outcome.
Our special #360debate today is: Has Pep Guardiola’s time at Bayern been a success?
Here’s a fact: winning the Champions League is really, really hard. No team has ever defended the trophy since its rebranding.
Manchester City have spent £600m since 2010 to reach a semi-final; PSG a similar figure on four quarter-finals. It takes more than a brilliant coach to be successful.
Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho only won two, and English club football ruled in the mid to late 2000s. Guardiola and the club will be disappointed not to have reached one final but even the opposition they’ve faced in the semi-finals – two era-defining sides in Barcelona and Atletico and Cristiano Ronaldo in his pomp – is a huge slice of bad luck.
0 - In none of their 6 CL semifinals under the reign of Guardiola, @FCBayern kept their sheets clean.Causalresearch. pic.twitter.com/mVdCGgBzrc
— OptaFranz (@OptaFranz) May 4, 2016
Europe shouldn’t define his legacy: the margins are too small. Overall, four straight league titles aside, he’s ultimately made them a better side: stronger, more skillful, more adaptable with greater squad depth and, as club officials testify to, implemented ideas and practices they’d never seen before and will carry forward, ala Cruyff at Barcelona.
Something, before too long, Carlo Ancelotti will be testifying to.
No matter how it is spun, Pep Guardiola’s spell at Bayern Munich has been a failure.
A third-successive elimination from the Champions League semifinals is a blemish which cannot be erased. Not even by an imminent trio of Bundesliga successes under his control, or a second DFB-Pokal.
These domestic competitions have looked after themselves during Bayern’s storied history. It was his job – with a wonderfully-talented squad – to assume the continental mantle left by predecessor Jupp Heynckes.
It is a tinkering, obsessive approach which has undone Guardiola during the big tests. A reticent 4-3-3 did for them at Atletico Madrid this time, while the overwrought 3-5-2 got them off to the worst possible start against Barcelona the year before. An ignorance of basic, mundane defending from set-pieces was fatal against Real Madrid the year before.
Maybe he never ‘got’ Bayern in the way Heynckes did with his roaring beasts. Or simply when the safety net provided by Lionel Messi was gone, tiny cracks became chasms.
