In 2011, Barcelona produced arguably the best performance ever in the world’s biggest club game. Nine years on, Pep Guardiola has not returned to the Champions League final.
In that Wembley clash, a 3-1 scoreline flattered an overwhelmed, outclassed Manchester United. Barcelona felt arguably the greatest team in history; three years into a managerial career that featured a sole Champions League exit that was attributable to a strange combination of an erupting Icelandic volcano and Jose Mourinho at his Machiavellian best, Guardiola was staking a claim to be the finest manager ever.
But 2020 will see a seventh different manager conquer the continent since Guardiola last did so. Two of them, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane, have done what he was long tipped to and joined Bob Paisley in the select band of triple European champions.
Neither is regarded as one of the game’s great philosophers but they have displayed a surer touch on defining occasions; the sort when reputations are made and lost.
Meanwhile, Guardiola has gone out to Roberto Di Matteo, Ancelotti, Luis Enrique, Diego Simeone, Leonardo Jardim, Jurgen Klopp, Mauricio Pochettino and now Rudi Garcia. The victors have been different but themes have recurred for Guardiola: misfortune, misjudgement and missed penalties, away goals and avoidable goals.
Another common denominator is that Guardiola has not won the competition without Lionel Messi. And, even if the Argentine has only a solitary Champions League winners' medal since parting company with his mentor in 2012, his aura of invincibility now feels more predicated on one player.
Without him, Guardiola is meeting his match at earlier stages: a hat-trick of semi-final exits with Bayern Munich have been followed, albeit after one in the last 16, with three quarter-final departures with Manchester City. He has won five league titles in that time - rewards for consistency, but his teams have suffered in knockout ties.
There is a temptation to say that Guardiola’s decision-making has grown more erratic without Messi. Perhaps it did when he still had his protégé; it is not the most memorable element of 10-man Chelsea’s improbable draw at the Nou Camp in 2012 but Guardiola began with a team lacking any genuine width in defence or midfield.
The strange selections have followed. In Bayern’s 2014 semi-final against Real Madrid, Guardiola, the high priest of midfielders, left his side short-staffed in the middle of the pitch by playing 4-2-4. He lost 4-0.
The following year, he opted for a high-pressing game that left three defenders isolated against Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar. Bayern lost 3-0. Twelve months on, he benched Thomas Muller as Atletico Madrid beat Bayern 1-0.
Fast forward to his time at City and that capacity to confound and confuse opponents has instead detracted from his own side’s strengths.
Original thinkers tend to have a surfeit of ideas; the challenge is picking the right ones at the right time. If there is a fine line between genius and madness, Guardiola has strayed to the wrong side.
He went to Anfield in 2018 with Aymeric Laporte at left-back and Ilkay Gundogan as an ersatz right winger. He visited Tottenham in 2019 with Kevin de Bruyne, Leroy Sane and Bernardo Silva on the bench and Fabian Delph, who had not started in the Premier League or Champions Leagues for three months, parachuted in at left-back.
On Saturday he chose a back three for the first time since January; this was City changing their tactics because of Lyon’s, not vice-versa.
Overthinking has been warped thinking.
Over eight Champions League exits, Guardiola has been too bold and too fearful. He has had too many midfielders and too few.
His teams have sometimes had the majority of chances – City ‘beat’ Lyon 2.68 to 0.87 on xG – but a manager whose teams often dominate the ball has struggled to exert control when games get away from them.
Lyon’s two goals in eight minutes followed Tottenham’s two in four, Liverpool’s three in 19 and Barcelona’s three in 17 against Bayern. Many of those goals have come from counter-attacks.
A great attacking coach has not been a great defensive one in deciding Champions League games. While there are hard-luck stories, his methodology feels flawed. After great achievement has come underachievement.
On at least five occasions, and perhaps as many as seven, Guardiola’s sides have gone out to less talented teams. In all four seasons with City, they have exited to ones that cost less. It means his record can be reappraised in the context of his rivals.
Mourinho’s star has faded and his era has passed, but he won Champions Leagues with two clubs who had not reached such heights for 17 and 45 years respectively and with sides who were not favourites.
Klopp has taken over clubs at low ebbs and propelled them further. He has half as many Champions League wins as Guardiola but a better record in the last eight years, with three finals to none.
It leaves Guardiola a relatively young manager at 49 but trying to revisit an increasingly distant past. Only two managers, in Ernst Happel and Jupp Heynckes, have won the European Cup a decade since last doing so.
Guardiola has to repeat his own history to make some more. And, eventually, he has to do it without Messi.
