Pep Guardiola's trials and tribulations in Europe point to how unpredictable the Champions League really is

The pattern of sudden collapse in Europe's elite competition has haunted Guardiola throughout his career. Will he be able to overcome this flaw this time around? Or will it be more of the same?

It took Pep Guardiola an unusually long time to get over Manchester City’s collapse at Liverpool in the Champions League. According to those at the very top level of the club, it dominated his thoughts – “[it] really killed him” – right through the Premier League title win, as well as the summer, and to now, the eve of a new European campaign.

Part of that was of course just down to Guardiola and his intense personality, as he was desperate to understand how everything that had been so right had gone so wrong, and part of it was down to what the Champions League alone means.

A very large part of it, though, was because Guardiola would have seen winning that great competition as well as the league with City last season as “his greatest ever achievement”. That is some view when the Catalan has probably been responsible for Europe’s greatest ever side in Barcelona 2008-11, but that alone illustrates the point.

Guardiola feels that City’s lack of European Cup legacy is that profound a burden, that much of a hurdle, that it really will take so much to imbue them with the imposing belief required to go and win the competition.

That is a little rich when City themselves are so wealthy, and the Catalan is probably the greatest manager in the game right now.

The reality is that the club have everything in place to produce the best team on the continent, and everything about how they regularly play and win indicates they probably reached that level last season.

Whether they can prove it with club football’s most prestigious prize is arguably this season’s most compelling storyline, along with the fate of the other favourites, the defending champions Real Madrid, after the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo.

That was naturally brought up in the pre-match press conference, taken by Mikel Arteta, ahead of the season-opener against Lyon. Guardiola has a touchline ban after his dismissal against Liverpool last season, in another element that displays his deep frustration regarding that tie. Arteta arguably handled it with even greater diplomacy than Guardiola would have.

“I am surprised when you have a team that has won it three times on the row,” Arteta said, referring to Madrid, “but that means we are doing things really well.”

Exceptionally well, probably better than anyone in Europe. It’s just that the Champions League isn’t a competition that definitively decides that status, and it’s not like Guardiola hasn’t been in this situation before.

Guardiola feels that City’s lack of European Cup legacy is a burden on the club (Getty)

You could even argue he had the best team in Europe in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 but didn’t win it.

The primary reasons he didn’t are relatively consistent, and they are not that his teams lacked continental pedigree, given five of those side were either that Barcelona side or Bayern Munich.

When you consider it, and consider how supreme he is as a manager, it is actually remarkable Guardiola will now go at least eight years since his second and last Champions League title in 2011. That victory for the ages at Wembley seemed a genuine “end of history” moment for modern football, signalling how Guardiola and Lionel Messi would go on to dominate club football for the next decade. That has someway happened, given they have racked up eight domestic titles between them out of a possible 13, but it has not happened in the Champions League.

They only won one more there, and that was Messi with Barcelona in 2015. Guardiola is still waiting.

This maybe isn’t that surprising when you consider the record of previous greats or winners, showing how exacting and difficult the Champions League has really been.

Guardiola’s Barcelona side between 2008 and 2011 is considered one of Europe’s best ever teams (Getty)

The fact the all-time record is three, and has only been managed by three coaches – Bob Paisley, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane – still feels somewhat incongruous. And, just like the majority of managers to win two titles or more, two of those record-breakers did so in brilliantly brief spells of time with one team: Paisley 1977-81, Zidane 2016-18, Bela Guttmann 1961-62, Helenio Herrera 1964-65, Nereo Rocco 1963-69, Brian Clough 1979-80, Arrigo Sacchi 1989-90, Vicente Del Bosque 2000-02, and Guardiola 2009-11.

There aren’t that many to win it in different timescales or with different clubs, and those that managed it with the latter usually did it shortly after their initial glory.

Ottmar Hitzfeld claimed the 2001 title with Bayern Munich four years after 1997 with Borussia Dortmund; Jose Mourinho the 2010 Champions League with Inter six years after 2004 Porto.

Ancelotti did win his third, with Real Madrid, seven years after his second with AC Milan; Sir Alex Ferguson his second with Manchester United nine years after his first, but it is Ernst Happel and Jupp Heynckes that really stand out here.

Happel waited 13 years for European Cups between Feyenoord 1970 and Hamburg 1983, Heynckes an impressive 15 between Real Madrid 1998 and Bayern Munich 2013.

All of these history-makers still had hugely painful Champions League seasons of their own, that left them with the frustrating feeling their legacy could have been so much greater, and that would leave them and Guardiola empathising with each other.

Manchester City have the talent – but do they have the mindset required to win the Champions League? (AFP/Getty Images)

There’s also the argument that, since the expansion at the start of this millennium alone, the competition has only been won by the actual “best team in Europe” in 10 out of 19 seasons.

This in some ways reflects the unique glory of the Champions League as a knock-out, where it is at once so frustratingly elusive but also allows teams to seize single moments and opportunities of history.

It is not about doing it over the course of a season, but about doing it on the day, or really specific special nights and playing with life amid the prospect of sudden death.

But this is also what is so pointed to Guardiola, and what probably makes it so painful.

This era of super-club dominance means it is no surprise – and should mean it is not as historic a feat – that Paisley’s record of three European Cups has been equalled. In that, Guardiola also has his pick of super-clubs – maybe more than any other manager in history – but also has this problem of suffering a specific problem on specific single nights.

All of his eliminations in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018 have seen his teams briefly cave in sudden sensational spells.

The 2010 semi-final saw Inter score two goals in 12 first-leg minutes; in 2014 Real Madrid scored two in four and, all together, three in 18; 2015 Barcelona with three in 16; 2017 Monaco get two in eight and then two in 20; 2018 Liverpool get three in 19.

There were admittedly mitigating factors to some of those. The 2010 first-leg at Inter involved everything surrounding that volcano, 2014 to Real Madrid saw Guardiola himself get his tactics wrong and 2015 was just about the genius of Messi and a legacy performance.

But the pattern of collapse is still there. All involve this single problem that is now dominating Guardiola’s mind about the season ahead. It’s a flaw that has undercut so much overwhelming brilliance and one which he is desperate to resolve as he seeks to burnish his legacy.

It’s just the nature of the modern Champions League – and the lack of threat in this group stage – means that he will likely have to wait even longer to see if he has found a solution.