When ambition becomes obsession: Pep Guardiola in the Champions League

The great Bill Shankly is once said to have commented:

There are a few iterations of that quote from the legendary Liverpool manager, but you get the gist of it, and Pep Guardiola would do well to take heed of it when it comes to the Champions League knockout stages in future.

His Manchester City were overwhelming favourites to reach the semi-finals of the competition for the first time under his tutelage, but came unstuck after adjusting their tried and tested style/game-plan to try to overcome a Lyon team that had finished seventh in Ligue 1.

It wasn't the first time Guardiola has needlessly tinkered with a winning formula. Yes, City have defensive deficiencies, but they are one of the greatest Premier League sides of all time and have enough in their armour to defeat Lyon.

The Spaniard will undoubtedly go down as one of the finest coaches of all time. He is widely credited for reinventing the modern game, but his obsession with winning this trophy again is clouding his thinking and is having an almost adverse effect now.

On the eve of the clash with Lyon he spoke of it being a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for City. He wanted to see his team 'be who they are', and yet his tactics hindered their attempts to do so. It was almost too much pressure and hype.

Instead, this will go down as another missed chance for City to challenge for their first Champions League trophy and for Guardiola to join a select group of managers to have won it on three occasions.

Last season there was reportedly a tension and puzzlement at his decision-making for the quarter-final with Spurs, while media supposedly 'in-the-know' claimed he had spent the previous summer dwelling on how his team fell apart against Liverpool at the same stage in 2017-18.

Guardiola would have put himself through similar soul-searching when he came up short in a trio of semi-finals at Bayern Munich, notably when they were thumped 4-0 at home in a second leg against Real Madrid in 2013-14.

These are defeats that will have been almost scarring for a perfectionist such as Guardiola, a man who demands the very best at all times and analyses the very finest of details. What will have initially felt like anomalies within a series of all-conquering campaigns will have hurt and transformed ambition into an obsession that has in turn led to over-thinking and over-complicating matters as he seeks solutions.

It is of course magnified by the fact he knows his time at Manchester City will be defined by the Champions League. Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini both delivered Premier League titles before the Catalan breezed into the Etihad. Winning in England was never easy, but somewhat expected given Guardiola’s reputation.

No, his arrival was supposed to ensure a permanent reservation for dining at the highest table of football aristocracy, attracting the real A-list star players if necessary, and delivering the Champions League crown that so many deem to be essential for teams wanting to be treated seriously as a giant of the game.

He has yet to achieve his mandate with the latter; an itch he can’t quite reach to scratch. It is a laboured point for anyone attending his Champions League press conferences, one he tries to shrug off but is ultimately irritated by at the same time.

Unfortunately for Guardiola, the questions will continue for another year and he remains no closer to unearthing the answers he craves to deliver for both City and himself. Another – short – close-season fixating on what to do differently will ensue, but when his team do reach the latter stages of Europe's elite competition once again, he would do well to forget about trying to wow the world with an attempt at a visionary tactical masterclass, and keep it simple, by trusting his best group of footballers to win the way they do almost week in, week out in the Premier League.