Top 5 Reasons Why Pep Isn’t A Failure If He Doesn’t Win The UCL

The Catalan coach, Pep Guardiola deserves more respect for dominating English and German football, even though Europe’s biggest prize has eluded him since 2011.

Revisionists will tell you that Pep Guardiola was a failure at Bayern Munich because he did not win the Champions League. They are lying. Rival fans will tell you that he will be a failure at Manchester City unless he wins Europe’s biggest prize. They too are lying.

READ ALSO: How Guardiola Stopped Odegaard From Joining Bayern Munich

Undoubtedly, Guardiola finds it irritating that he hasn’t won the European Cup since defeating Manchester United with Barcelona in 2009 and 2011. A coach with his pedigree and the teams at his disposal ought to have won it more frequently.

But, there are a lot of unforeseen circumstances and random occurrences in knockout football that could be the difference between making history and going home empty-handed.

Nonetheless, the league table is accurate. You have the chance to atone for freak results over the course of a season, and Guardiola has dominated the competition at Bayern and City as well as Barcelona earlier.

Thus, regardless of the outcome of City’s thrilling quarterfinal match against Bayern and Thomas Tuchel, an old friend, Guardiola deserves more recognition for his work at both clubs. His incredible accomplishments cannot be discounted because of a string of unfortunate events in Europe.

The fastest Bundesliga title win

After four demanding years with Barcelona, the Catalan took over Bayern in 2013, revitalized after spending time in New York. He took over a squad that had just won the treble under Jupp Heynckes and had broken the record for winning the Bundesliga at the earliest possible stage.

This is perfect, right? Not quite. Sir Alex Ferguson has frequently discussed how tough it is to keep a winning squad motivated. Vicente del Bosque, on the other hand, acknowledged that despite winning the World Cup and consecutive European Championships, his Spanish team lacked motivation.

But Guardiola managed to make a world-beating team even better domestically, wrapping up the title in March 2014 after 27 games, setting a new record for the fastest Bundesliga win and finishing the season with 90 points, 19 ahead of Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund in second.

His side also set a record for earning the most points in the first half of the season, taking an astonishing 47 from a possible 51. Bayern then completed the double by comprehensively beating Dortmund 2-0 in the DFB-Pokal final.

The only sour note of an otherwise dream first season was losing 5-0 on aggregate to Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-finals, after knocking out Arsenal and Manchester United earlier in the competition.

A trophy-laden legacy and a sack full of records

The next year, Bayern avenged their defeat by storming to the title with 88 points. Furthermore, they came agonizingly close to winning the Champions League when they lost to Atletico Madrid in the semifinals on away goals after Thomas Muller missed a penalty and their side had 35 shots, 12 of which were on goal.

Guardiola, who had already committed to joining City, completed his time in charge on a high note by defeating Thomas Tuchel’s Dortmund in the DFB-Pokal final on penalties.

He left Bayern having won five out of six domestic trophies, plus the UEFA Super Cup and the Club World Cup.

Guardiola’s Bayern scored a record 254 goals in 102 league matches while conceding just 58. They also kept 59 clean sheets – another record.

He won 82 out of 104 games, a win percentage of 80.4 which destroyed that of his closest challenger, Ottmar Hitzfeld (58.4%).

Guardiola’s Bayern did not just win the Bundesliga, they utterly destroyed the opposition.

Another title but more European pain

The following season, Guardiola became the first Bayern manager to retain the Bundesliga title since Felix Magath in 2006.

His side were not as ruthless as in the first campaign, picking up just 79 points, but still finished 10 ahead of closest challengers Wolfsburg.

Bayern enjoyed some great European nights, thrashing Shakhtar Donetsk 7-0 in the last 16 and hammering Porto 6-1 in the quarter-finals, although there was more heartache against a Spanish team in the semi-finals.

In an emotional first match against his beloved Barcelona, Pep’s Bayern were beaten 3-0 at the Camp Nou, and though they won the second leg 3-2, they went out 5-3 on aggregate.

It was a heavy defeat, but luck was definitely not on his side, as Arjen Robben, David Alaba and Franck Ribery all missed both legs, while Robert Lewandowski played while wearing a mask after breaking his jaw.

Barca, meanwhile, had a full squad available and were firing on all cylinders in the first season of the magical ‘MSN’ forward line of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar.

Bayern also missed out on the domestic cup, being beaten on penalties in the semi-finals by Dortmund. All in all, it was Guardiola’s worst season in Munich, but still a pretty good one.

A serene era in Bavaria compared to his successors

And it is easy to forget that before he arrived, the German title race was far from the cakewalk it has become for Bayern in the last decade.

They failed to win the title in 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2012. In 2011, only two years before Guardiola joined, they came third.

Guardiola’s three-year tenure might not sound long either, but by Bayern standards, it was Ferguson-esque.

His three years in charge make him their longest-serving manager since Hitzfeld, who spent six years at the helm between 1998 and 2004.

Since the Catalan swapped Bavaria for Manchester, Carlo Ancelotti and Niko Kovac lasted little more than a year.

Despite winning the triple crown, Hansi Flick was given less than two years, and in March, Thomas Tuchel took the place of Julian Nagelsmann because he was in danger of losing the Bundesliga championship to Borussia Dortmund.

Pep’s tenure at Bayern was calm and peaceful in comparison to his successors, and the Bundesliga championship, which Bayern values so highly, was never in doubt.

Ripping up the Premier League rule book

When Guardiola joined City in 2016, his critics complained that he had taken another easy job at a rich club.

The Catalan may have joined a club owned by the billionaire Abu Dhabi royal family and run by his old friends at Barcelona, Txiki Begiristain and Ferran Soriano, and they had won two of the last five Premier League titles, but it should not be forgotten that he inherited a team that had become demotivated under Manuel Pellegrini and finished 15 points off the pace of shock Premier League champions Leicester City. They had only scraped fourth spot ahead of Manchester United on goal difference.

Guardiola overhauled the City squad in little more than year, taking a bold decision to get rid of Joe Hart and prioritising the signing of Ederson and four full-backs at a cost of around £200 million.

He was mocked when he finished his first season without a trophy, but emphatically silenced his doubters in his second campaign as City romped to the title and became the first team in the Premier League history to take 100 points.

And they did it playing a style of slick, possession football that many pundits thought would never succeed in England.