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Pep Guardiola with his young star Phil Foden
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PHIL NOBLE / REUTERS
Pep Guardiola probably didn't care, but this moment deserved more glamor.
Not only is Manchester City in a European Cup final for the first time in 51 years, but for the team's coach himself a dry spell passed that may have seemed like half a century to him.
It wasn't glamor that exuded this 2-0 win over Paris Saint-Germain. A cold evening in Manchester with snow on the grass in the first half, a stadium that was still empty, of course, and the Paris professionals, who were seriously frustrated at the end and tried to compensate for this by chopping and kicking, also brought a bit of the county league -Atmosphere in this competition, which is called the premier class. And yet it is the opera house of European football. In the opera house, one actually expects grandeur.
Guardiola and City deserved several curtains and loud applause in this soccer opera, the call for encore, so superior, so calculated, so well-rehearsed the light blue ensemble was also in the second leg. City let PSG run up and stabbed mercilessly twice with the stiletto. Early on in the game to make it 1-0, when goalkeeper Ederson outplayed virtually all the players in the game with a long ball. A few years ago the packing rate was hot topic in football analysis, a statistical value used to measure how many opponents could be outplayed with a ball. This 1-0 move, completed by Riyad Mahrez, would have been the perfect object lesson for it. It was also Mahrez who scored in the second half, again after a counterattack that could not be better taught.
Champions League seemed to be his competition
Guardiola had to wait a whole decade for this moment, he won the Champions League in his first year as head coach, in 2009 with FC Barcelona, and again two years later, it seemed to be his competition, Guardiola, the tinkerer, everyone Can predict the game situation, someone like that still has to win the Champions League in a row.
We were convinced of that at the time, and actually we still are.
But between 2011 and 2021 there are eight unsuccessful attempts in which Guardiola has been trusted to triumph annually, and in which he always failed. Again with Barcelona in 2012, when he was surprised by super-defensive Chelsea. Then, following his sabbatical year, three times with FC Bayern, three times against three different Spanish teams, Real, Barcelona, Atlético. And then four times with City, with whom he never made it to the semifinals.
Much has been written about what part the coach himself had in this departure.
With Bayern against Real, he then complained himself that he was responsible for the cracking 4-0 defeat at home.
Last year, after City had again said goodbye prematurely, against Olympique Lyon, an opponent who should not have been an obstacle in the knockout round for such a mature, expensive and accurately put together team, also asked DER SPIEGEL: "Is he the problem?"
He trusted the team
Guardiola had to listen to a lot, for example the accusation that he wanted too much in these years. He claimed that his coaching would bring the teams to the crown, instead of letting the team simply trust them in one or the other crucial game. You get the impression that this is exactly what happened against PSG in both games. Guardiola will never be someone who just lets go and says: Go out and play football. But his team is now so calibrated to his style of play, they play Guardiola football. Even without the trainer having to prove this to her and the public every time.
Guardiola did not present a line-up coup on Wednesday, he maneuvered the 36-year-old veteran Fernandinho into the starting line-up, which was a bit of a surprise, but otherwise he trusted those who had already contested the first leg in Paris and the attacks by Neymar and Mbappé there have successfully resisted. The team paid him back, they were basically always in control of the situation, and they didn't allow themselves to be provoked by the PSG indiscipline. Manchester City are not only well on their way to becoming English champions again. This team is also the favorite in the final, no matter who it is against.
Real Madrid or Chelsea FC, two teams with whom Guardiola has its history, just as it has its history with almost all major teams in Europe.
Real Madrid, the unloved, perhaps hated rival from the old Barcelona days, the clashes during his Barca days with the Madrilenians coached by José Mourinho were like war.
Guardiola has crossed the blade so often with Chelsea FC in the Premier League, but the defeat in the Champions League in 2012 remained a bad wound.
The departure had contributed to his decision to leave Barcelona.
With the semi-final against Chelsea she began the losing streak of Pep Guardiola in the Champions League.
It would be a new story if it ended against Chelsea.
