A City ready for Pep

The appetite for Pep Guardiola in Manchester will be greater than it ever was in Munich, writes Adam Bate…

With Pep Guardiola’s time at Bayern Munich coming to an end, some will wish to style his efforts as a relative failure. After all, he’d taken over a team that had reached the Champions League final in three of the previous four seasons, only to fail to negotiate the semi-final stage in each of his three years at the club.

Guardiola, however, is likely to take comfort in the process and the fact that he won’t be alone in the feeling that Bayern went about things in the right way. “We played as we wanted to play,” he said in the aftermath of Tuesday’s elimination at the hands of a typically stoic Atletico Madrid side, “but we came up one goal short. I’m sorry.”

Cup competitions simply cannot come with a guarantee of success. But there is little reason to doubt that Guardiola has made great players better. His training sessions have inspired awe among the squad – an education. He has challenged players. “I’ve never had a manager who has changed so many things,” said veteran striker Claudio Pizarro upon his arrival.

Toni Kroos described him as “the best coach I ever had in terms of football ideas” and this attention to detail – a devotion to helping his players find solutions – has helped forge Guardiola’s reputation. Trophies are important but it’s this training ground work that employers can count upon. “I gave my life for this team,” added Guardiola on Tuesday.

That is respected in Munich, but the five-time European champions have high expectations. They reached the semi-finals three times under Guardiola, but then, they’d got that far 15 times before. Perhaps that’s why Franz Beckenbauer could criticise the …

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