Josep Guardiola’s Man City era was marked by ugly departures from Europe. (Image: Getty)
Soccer is a simple game. 22 people chase the ball for 90 minutes, and in the end Real Madrid almost always knocks Manchester City out of the Champions League. The only difference this week is that 21 players were on the pitch for most of the second leg.
There was something familiar about City’s recent exit from Europe’s most prestigious competition. First, the opponents, considering it was the fifth consecutive season that the two teams met in the knockout stages of the Champions League.
But it is as if Guardiola has rolled all the shortcomings of his time as City manager in Europe into one. The starting lineup for the first leg was a big surprise, resulting in a scoreline that was almost impossible to overturn with a header in the second leg.
The most frustrating thing as far as Guardiola and City are concerned is that in the second leg they were good, really good. Even with 10 players, there is an argument to be made that the Blues were the best team on the pitch for the whole 90 minutes.
Express sports on FB! Get all the best sports news and more on our Facebook page
In the end, it was completely out of his control that swayed the tie, with Bernardo Silva’s red card and the resulting penalty ending any realistic hopes of making it back from a 4-0 aggregate deficit. But that’s part of Guardiola’s problem in Europe: trying to control the uncontrollable.
Guardiola’s greatest strength in the Premier League (six titles in 10 years) is his greatest weakness in the Champions League. Over a 38-game season, the uncontrollable can be brought under control, at least to far greater effect than in the Champions League.
That’s why Guardiola dismissed the idea that Real Madrid were his biggest challenge just minutes after City were eliminated from this year’s competition. Instead, the 55-year-old used it as another opportunity to remember the heavyweight clash with Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool.
When asked by Spanish media, Guardiola said: “No, no. Liverpool with Jurgen Klopp (the biggest challenge for me). I was in Spain and I didn’t know what it was like. Real Madrid… they beat us more, but they know how we played.”
Will one Champions League win be enough for Man City if Pep Guardiola leaves? (Image: Getty)
There’s also a bit of irony that when Guardiola won City’s first and only Champions League title, it was by finally embracing some of the chaos that saw their opponents thrive in the same competition. The 2023 Champions League winners will probably be the most anti-Pep side of his City career. In the final against Inter Milan, Guardiola started with four centre-backs in defense, a wing partnership of Jack Grealish and Bernardo Silva, and target-man striker Erling Haaland, whose on-the-ball ability was far more limited than City’s other forward options.
It paid off, and City were crowned European champions. The following season, they were unlucky not to advance to the semi-finals after a close battle with Real Madrid. Just this week, Guardiola described the 2024 quarter-final at the Etihad as the “most unfair defeat” of his time at City.
And this is also the flip side of this particular coin. The best teams in Europe don’t always win the Champions League. Liverpool in 2005, Chelsea in 2012 and Chelsea in 2021 (at the expense of Guardiola’s City), to name just a few.
So who is to blame? Asked in a press conference after Real Madrid’s press conference whether winning the Champions League once every 10 years should be considered a failure, he did not think that was fair. With characteristic sarcasm, he said: “Yes, you’re right. To be considered[as a successful Man City manager]he should have won the Champions League six times. Yes, yes, for sure.”
It is certain that the tactical and personnel decisions made by Guardiola (Lyon in 2020, Chelsea in 2021, Real Madrid in 2026) contributed to City’s shortcomings. But if Guardiola failed to win the Champions League once in his 10 years in England, the same must be said of Klopp’s failure to win once in nine, Alex Ferguson twice in 26 and Jose Mourinho once in nine.
