Pep was initially signed for more than just trophies; he was signed to forge and direct a new top-down football philosophy at Bayern but departs only one measly contract into what Bayern had hoped would be a dynasty. He’s taken the first team on light-years tactically and he’s brought through players but will Pep have done for Bayern by June what Johann Cruyff did in his time at Barcelona? That is impossible. Bayern will not be able to hand over the reins to a Pep disciple and carry on, like Barca did with the late Tito Vilanova.
What, then, has the Pep era brought to Bayern? Remarkable as it may sound, the world’s pre-eminent tactician still has people to convince. The reason is understandable. Given their budget and competitive advantage over the rest of the Bundesliga, the German league title is taken as a near certainty before a ball is kicked in Bavaria - every season. Roughly it goes that Bayern win one and someone else wins it every two years. Indeed, it needs to be a terrible season for them to lose it.
Instead, despite its vagaries and fortune, the Champions League title is the one by which Bayern and their rivals are measured. Win it and they’ve done well; lose it and they haven’t. It’s blunt but accurate for the European super clubs.
Nobody is saying that Ancelotti is a more innovative coach than Guardiola but Bayern are effectively swapping a man who can as good as guarantee the league title for one who gives them a better shot at the Champions League. In the absence of a permanent Pep, one who would associate his name with Bayern forever, that is the best they can do.
Barcelona went on to win the trophy last season after battering Bayern out of sight in the semi-finals. The season before it was Ancelotti-coached Real Madrid who would also go on to claim the cup after beating Bayern convincingly in the last four.
Ancelotti demonstrated in those games that the football vision or philosophy he has is flexible enough to deal with the opponent on the night. He was content to leave the ball to Bayern and attempt to pick off them on the counter. That was an opposite approach to the one he usually used in La Liga. It worked. Pep lost himself in the second leg and Bayern melted down.
Having won the Bundesliga title as early as March with an away win at Hertha Berlin, Pep celebrated long into the night and ceded to his players’ demands for a day off. Then Bayern went soft. They won the league so early that they psychologically clocked out. They dropped points left right and centre in the Bundesliga and were smashed by Real. Pep’s ability to smother an entire league campaign worked against him as his players had long since given up before the semis. Perversely, that’s not a fear for a team coached by Ancelotti.
For him, league titles are a little harder to come by than Pep. He has won only three in his 20-odd years as a coach compared to Pep’s five. The Italian has, though, won three Champions League titles too. As ratios go, that one is pretty rare in the modern game.
Ancelotti’s methods might well be better suited to the vicissitudes of knockout football than the unrelenting monotony of a league campaign. He is a coach whose strengths lie in man-management; making players feel comfortable, at ease, and content to play their own game.
This kind of psychological disarmament is best applied in the Champions League where sometimes players need to be wound down before a big game instead of being wound up. Brian Clough, for example, encouraged his Nottingham Forest players to drink beer on the coach towards the 1979 European Cup final. They won.
Ancelotti left a lasting impact among the players in his last job to the extent that Cristiano Ronaldo described him lately as a big "cute bear" who he missed a lot. James Rodriguez, Sergio Ramos, Marcelo, Toni Kroos and others all publically declared their sadness at his exit. That sort of devotion brought glory to Real, and elsewhere in Ancelotti’s career, and could stand him well in his next assignment at Bayern.
The Champions League is the title Bayern crave above all other. Guardiola will have one more shot at it before he goes. There is plenty of respect for Pep in that Bayern dressing room but is there that same love which carried the players to win a defiant treble for the outgoing Jupp Heynckes?
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