Pep Guardiola once dominated European football many times right from the early days of entering his top coaching career. Remember when he first debuted at Barcelona as a captain, right in his first season (2008-2009), he and Blaugrana won the legendary six-time crown. Two years later, Pep's Barcelona won the Champions League again with an even stronger squad than before.
When leaving Camp Nou and arriving at Allianz Arena, the Champions League title has avoided Pep many times even though his Bayern Munich at that time was extremely strong. During 3 seasons leading the "Bayern", Pep could not even reach the final once.
Later, when he came to Man City, he inherited a squad that had 2 Premier League titles before. However, Man City when Pep arrived was still not a team ready to compete for the Champions League title. In the past 10 years at the Etihad Stadium, Pep has set countless records such as 4 consecutive Premier League titles, the first team to win the domestic treble and then the historic treble with the Champions League.
Pep's 10-year journey at Man City has had too many glories, but in the Champions League alone, 1 championship is probably not enough. According to statistics from The Athletic, the number of Champions League titles Man City is expected to win in the past 10 years is 1.92 (considered 2).
In the 4 years Pep led Barcelona, the "giant"'s chance of reaching the Champions League semi-finals was 100%, similar to 3 years in charge of Bayern Munich. However, when he came to Man City, Pep's chance of reaching the semi-finals was only 30%. One of the reasons for this is that Real Madrid is always a difficult obstacle for Man City in the knockout rounds, sometimes meeting too early.
Real Madrid has won 4 Champions League titles during Pep's time leading Man City. However, The Citizens have also stopped many times against other opponents in the knockout rounds.
In the last 5 seasons, Man City has been eliminated from the Champions League by Real Madrid 4 times. There are matches Pep does not understand why Man City lost when the win rate for them in the final minutes has reached 99%.
Champions League is different from Premier League, it is where all tactics are sometimes just calculations on paper and not true in reality. Pep is famous for being very good at tactics but he continuously loses to Real Madrid just because "football is like that".
In Pep Guardiola's operating system, every player is put into a framework and is almost not allowed to "play freely" because this will break the structure. Man City has countless big stars under Pep Guardiola, but they have never escaped the predetermined framework.
In the Champions League, this is almost opposite to the suddenness in top matches, where each individual sometimes decides the whole situation just by a moment of brilliance "not normal". Most recently, Federico Valverde's hat-trick in the first leg of the round of 16 sunk Man City at the Bernabeu. A match where Real Madrid did not have Kylian Mbappe, Jude Bellingham or Rodrygo, but Valverde with the role of central midfielder scored 3 goals.
Man City can still be proud because they are Champions League champions. The first time in 2023 helped them be named in the legendary temple of this tournament. However, only 1 time in Pep's last 10 years at the Etihad stadium is probably still too few.
