Guardiola is measured to the anti-Guardiola

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"I'm not perfect!" said Guardiola, happy and overwhelmed, excited and exhausted, fed up and delighted that they always ask him the same questions when this Monday in rainy Manchester the irrevocable day of the preview of another Champions League tie arrived and the audience reminded him of everything he did not have, or everything he lost, and he never lost more than when he lost the final in 2021.

Guardiola's face is a succession of contradictory expressions when he is confronted with bad – the worst – memories.

Because Bayern are coming to face their City in a fully-fledged advanced final, and the Bayern coach is called Tuchel, and Tuchel is a skeletal shadow projected like a nightmare over Guardiola's career.

An ectoplasm that signals the 2021 final, lost against Tuchel's Chelsea, in a world-famous match because Guardiola faced it by removing Fernandinho from the lineup to place Gündogan as a midfielder —a measure that symbolizes what the English call “overthinking

every time they label the vices of the Catalan coach, his inclination to twist plans in search of wonders that normally turn out to be disappointing once confronted with the reality of the footballers' hearts, those people who charge to play the game projected by the coaches.

A match that Tuchel assures that he knew he would win before playing it, upon learning that Fernandinho, the mainstay par excellence, had been postponed due to

.

"We will try to win the Champions League," said Guardiola;

“As we tried last year and the year before, and the year before, and the year before, and so on for the last six years... But my dream is not to win.

My dream is to live it.

To be here.

How many

has Jack Nicklaus played in his 40-year career?

120?

130?

He won 18. Michael Jordan won six rings and played 16 seasons.

In sports you lose more than you win.

That's how I live my profession.

I am not perfect.

The best recognition as a coach is being here for another year”.

Added to the recurring claim to win a Champions League with City is the sudden presence of Thomas Tuchel on the rival bench.

A coach who had been free since the summer, who had spent months arranging unofficial agreements with Barça, Tottenham and PSG, in case anyone was left without a coach, until Franck Kessié scored the goal that decided the last league classic at Camp Nou, on Sunday March 19, at minute 92.

Bayern say that Kessie's goal broke Tuchel's moral bond with Joan Laporta.

Barça's victory meant the League and the consolidation of Xavi Hernández on a bench that until this winter had one of its strongest contenders in the German.

Aware that his chances of signing for Barça were evaporating, Tuchel contacted the Barça board to communicate that if it seemed okay to everyone they would forget the talks held before Christmas.

The agent Pini Zahavi, who has Tuchel and Lewandowski on his list of guardianships, masterfully managed the times and simultaneously sent Bayern a warning: his client was free;

but the window to sign an agreement could close at any moment if Tuchel accepted the proposals that Tottenham and PSG had made him.

Unli Höness, the ideologue

The message set fire to Bayern's hayloft, which had lost that same Sunday in Leverkusen.

Uli Höness, the honorary president, had been calling Hasan Salihamidzic, the sports director, for months.

He insisted, they say at the club, that Julian Nagelsmann, the coach, could not continue leading the team since he did not have the necessary human qualities to lead such a heavy dressing room.

Tuchel was ideal.

Höeness and Salihamidzic attributed extraordinary value to him for his Champions League runner-up campaign in 2020 with PSG, and for having led Chelsea to the title with only three months to prepare in 2021, a work that culminated in the defeat of Guardiola.

If there was a man who knew Guardiola's secrets, it was Tuchel, his admirer, his friend,

Höness knows it and Guardiola too.

Tuchel learned well.

He did not develop a more offensive game, but rather deactivate Guardiola's attacks.

He did it at Chelsea, where he set up a system with three center-backs, two pivots and two full-backs that were more barracks than adventurous.

"He is a very creative coach," Guardiola described him;

“But Bayern is not a team built just to go looking for draws and see what happens in the second leg.

The Bayern that I knew as a coach comes out to win, no matter which field they play.

I don't expect a team that comes here to shut down, make two or three transitions and then see what happens at the Allianz Arena”.

Höeness and Salihamidzic aren't so sure that a draw in Manchester won't work for them.

They knew what they wanted when they joined their cause with the president, the imperturbable Oliver Kahn, who so often defended Nagelsmann.

They were convinced that Tuchel was to Guardiola what kryptonite was to Superman.

At the gates of a Champions League tie in which so much was at stake, they could not miss the opportunity to have him on their side.

"I make decisions because I see the players, because I see how they interact, because I feel it in my stomach," Guardiola defended himself when an English journalist asked him this Monday why he had done such strange things in the most important Champions League matches that had disputed with the City.

Things like the ones he did in 2021 for the glory of Tuchel, who returns like a bad dream.

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