Bayern Munich have announced Pep Guardiola will leave at the end of the season with Carlo Ancelotti
ready to step into his place as coach. Bayern won’t be getting a man
like Pep - who has single-handedly redefined the sport on a tactical and
strategic level. They will, however, be taking on a very capable
replacement who might just be able to deliver what has eluded Pep over
the course of his two seasons in charge – the Champions League title.
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?
