sport news Pep Guardiola's reputation will be diminished if he fails to win the Champions ... trends now
Imagine Sir Alex Ferguson had never won the Champions League as the manager of Manchester United. Imagine there had been no Treble. Imagine he had never said: ‘Football, bloody hell.’
Imagine Bayern Munich had won at the Nou Camp in 1999 and John Terry had scored that penalty for Chelsea in Moscow in 2008. Imagine how that would have affected the way history regards Ferguson.
He would still have been feted and honoured. He won 13 Premier League titles in his 26 years in charge at Old Trafford and that would have been more than enough for some to acclaim him still as the greatest manager of an English club that there has ever been.
His longevity would still have made him a giant of the game. He would still have knocked Liverpool off their perch.
But there would have been a caveat. The biggest prize in club football is still the Champions League and most of the people who say it isn’t are players and managers who have never won it.
Sir Alex Ferguson won the Champions League twice in dramatic fashion, showing how difficult it is to get over the line in European football's biggest competition
Pep Guardiola has not won the Champions League in 12 years and has tried to play down its significance at times, but he knows he needs to lead City to glory to cement his legacy
Guardiola won the competition twice with Barcelona in 2009 and 2011, but this feels like a small return for the leading manager of his generation
Ferguson’s dream was to bring the European Cup back to the club for the first time since Sir Matt Busby’s side won it in 1968 with George Best, Bobby Charlton, John Aston and the rest and when he did in Barcelona and again in Moscow, his legend was complete.
The competition does not sit at the emotional core of Manchester City in the same way but whatever protection mechanism Pep Guardiola employs to deflect it – he usually chooses sarcasm – he will be judged by the same criteria at the Etihad: if he does not win the Champions League with the team he has made consistently the best in England, there will always be a mental asterisk alongside his time at the club.
It is not that he would be regarded as a failure. No one could ever say that a coach who has created so much beauty at City and moulded sides that have come to dominate English football more completely than any team since Ferguson’s United was a failure. He has been an outstanding success.
City have been lucky to have him as their manager and English football has been lucky to have him working in its midst.
But as City prepare to face Bayern Munich in the first leg of their Champions League quarter final in Manchester on Tuesday night, Guardiola knows that if he does not win the competition with City, just as he did not win it when he was the manager of Bayern, then his time in charge of the reigning English champions will be regarded as incomplete and his reputation will be diminished.
We count Champions League titles as the ultimate arbiter of greatness in club managers and if that sometimes feels too reductive - there are not many, for instance, who would put Zinedine Zidane, who has won three, ahead of Jose Mourinho, who has only won two – but it is still an interesting guide. Carlo Ancelotti stands at the top of that list with four wins, Bob Paisley and Zidane are one below.
Guardiola has won it twice. But not since 2011. For a man who is widely regarded as the leading coach of his generation, a man revered within football, it feels like a small return on his genius.
Perhaps that is why the questions keep coming at him season after season, tie after tie, about how important it is to him to win it again. And perhaps that is why he sometimes seems barely able to tolerate those questions and to treat them with disdain.
But the questions will remain, the caveats will remain, until he wins it with City. His critics – yes, he still has some – will continue to say that he cannot win the Champions League without Lionel Messi in his side and for now, even if that disregards so much else that he has
