Pep Guardiola's big problem: How Bayern's domestic dominance is a danger in Europe

“I’m the coach of a big club,” Guardiola said on Tuesday. “I know that if we don’t qualify for the quarter-finals or win the Champions League, it’ll be a big problem for me.”

But…

“In the Champions League, I’m calmer. I’m more concerned about our games against Hanover or Cologne.”

It sounds like one of those typical press conference quotes, a platitude to play down hype around a game. Except, on this occasion, it was probably the truth, and that is because the domestic games mentioned could well have a big influence on winning back the Champions League.

Guardiola has seemingly learnt his lesson from last season. Then, as he repeatedly told Marti Perarnau in the book ‘Pep Confidential’ - indicating his growing obsession with the problem - Bayern paid the price for placing so much stock in the Champions League to the detriment of domestic competition. He had set the wrong tone on winning the league.

“Setting records doesn’t matter to me now,” Guardiola had said of the Bundesliga run-in after securing the league title. “Only winning these [Champions League] games.”

Far from ensuring that Bayern saved all their intensity for the European fixtures, though, the approach only sapped their energy. They were nowhere near their best, just at the point when they could have proclaimed themselves among the best in history by retaining the trophy.

This issue is an old dilemma in football, but also points to one of the more modern contradictions of the Champions League and the nature of the competition.

When all is broken down, Bayern are probably the best team in Europe. They have arguably the best manager, with the most balanced squad, and an exceptional concentration of quality across the board. Their system also ensures they can blow the rest of the elite away through total domination in a manner that pretty much no-one else can match.

If the Champions League were an actual league, they would probably win it with relative comfort. Instead, it is the total comfort with which they win the Bundesliga that could again prevent them from lifting the European trophy.

That’s one of the nuances of such a close knock-out competition between super-clubs, one of the notionally little details that can have big effects, and the history backs it up. In the 23 years since the European Cup properly became the Champions League, only two clubs have won it while also winning their domestic league at a barely-contested canter. They were Ajax 1995 and Bayern themselves in 2013. It was always going to be difficult to maintain that for two successive seasons.

The modern Champions League has otherwise been won by those who have had their sharpness maintained by a title race at least lasting into May, or those long out of domestic contention altogether.
The reasons are obvious. In the first case, a high level of intensity is kept. In the second, teams have something to raise themselves for, as in the cases of Liverpool 2005 or Chelsea 2012.

With Bayern, they could only drop. It was something Guardiola repeatedly lamented to Perarnau, the loss of “that stage of grace teams experience when they are on peak form”. It fed into everything they did from there on in. As Guardiola said, he and the team went “soft”.

First, training was changed so as to avoid injuries, including the removal of the regular 11 v 11 games. Then, the manager noticed they were actually running less. Occasional errors and gaps became frequent and bigger. Finally, because of the fact that so many of his players were off top form, Guardiola decided to change his tactics for that fateful game against Real Madrid.

It led to the most devastating defeat of his career, that 4-0 at the Allianz, but not just because of the score. It was also because he knew precisely where the problems began: winning the league in Berlin. "We thought we were the greatest and our decline started that day in Berlin," he said. "It hasn’t been a gentle decline, no, we’ve gone right off the rails.”

Now, the wonder is whether that lesson can keep Bayern on the right track. Guardiola is said to have become obsessed with that issue, of how to retain intensity and sharpness regardless of how early they win the league.

Last season, they claimed it on March 25. Now, it’s already all but confirmed. The great question - and the one that could define his oft-questioned decision to join Bayern Munich - is whether even a manager as meticulous and calculating as Guardiola can solve this grand problem.

It may be one of the great contradictions of his time at the club, that their extreme quality actually indirectly prevents them from applying it at the elite level. How he combats it will be telling. He might now go in search of those league records he so dismissed last season, in order to retain sharpness.

“To play football we need tension,” Guardiola said before Bayern played Manchester City this season, in what was a dead rubber they actually lost. “We need something to fight for … to be a little bit afraid.”

He is certainly afraid of what happened last year.