Tottenham Hotspur’s aggregate win over Manchester City in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League meant that Pep Guardiola has yet to advance past the quarterfinals of the competition his 3 years as Man City manager. Many might point to Sergio Aguero’s penalty miss in the first leg as the main cause of Manchester City’s elimination while others might point to the cruel VAR but Pep’s problem’s run deeper.
In his first season at the cash-rich Manchester City, he failed to win a single trophy and was knocked out of the Champions league by a brilliant Monaco side with the likes of Kylian Mbappe, Bernado Silva and Benjamin Mendy( the last two now Manchester City players).
A year later, Pep Guardiola’s side was sweeping everyone domestically en-route to a record 100 points league title-clinching season. They were drawn against Liverpool in the quarterfinals of the Champions League and having been so dominant in the English Premier League, the best they could have hoped for in the draw was an English team, right?
Wrong! Pep’s side was outclassed by Jurgen Klopp’s side and lost in both legs, 3-0 at Anfield and 2-1 at the Etihad. What really is Pep Guardiola’s problem in Europe? How can a team so good domestically crumble at the first sight of credible opponents in the Champions League, two of whom are from the league they have dominated for two years?
Indeed football is a game of fine margins and had Aguero scored his spot-kick, the story would be different but he missed and now Pep has to make a case as to why the ‘Fraudiola’ battalion are wrong. He may be a serial league winner as shown in his time at Barcelona and Bayern Munich but until he wins another Champions League title outside of the two he won at Barcelona, the Catalan will always be viewed as yet another beneficiary to Lionel Messi’s brilliance.