Pep Confidential (46 page)

By Monday the players are fired up and eagerly anticipating their chance to take revenge on Madrid. There is a sense that this will be an encounter of epic proportions, but there is little evidence of cool, tactical analysis. Pep allows himself to be carried away and even his performance at the press conference seems out of character. It’s then he makes a big mistake. He asks his men how they are feeling and they talk to him about the German talent for glorious comebacks, as well as the passion they have all felt on similarly epic nights in the Allianz Arena. All they want is to be allowed to play with their hearts and souls. They need to go out and attack hard from the first second of the game. Pep changes his mind again. The 3-4-3 had become a 4-2-3-1, but now he opts for a 4-2-4 formation. Just as he did in Dortmund in July 2013, in his debut match, he swithers between patience and passion and ends up going for passion. But it didn’t work in Dortmund, and it won’t work now.

Monday’s training consists of
rondos
, a short session looking for explosive strength and two 11 v 11 matches of 10 minutes each. It all draws to an end with 20 minutes of crosses and finishes, with a view to what’s likely to happen the following night in the match. Alaba and Ribéry have slightly raised temperatures and sore throats, and Javi’s knees are bothering him. The line-up is finally agreed and Pep pulls Ribéry to one side and tells him he’ll be starting.

The pre-match team talk, in the Presidential Suite of the Charles Hotel, reflects the optimism everyone in Munich is feeling: ‘Lads, this is not about going out and having a good time. You are going out there to do some damage. Go for the jugular. You are German, so be German and
attack
.’

In the end, their epic story ends in disaster. Not only because of the way in which they concede the goals but most of all because this Bayern side is unrecognisable. These are not the masters of possession who have dominated at the Bernabéu, in Manchester, London and in so many other arenas. No, this is a team which appears to have been stripped of their principal asset: superiority in the centre of the field.

It’s all too reminiscent of what happened in the German Super Cup, when Bayern put out a midfield of Thiago, Kroos and Müller and then changed to a 4-2-4 in an infamous game of two halves.

And yet the Allianz Arena is the perfect setting for Bayern’s comeback – a breathtaking atmosphere and a fired up, emotional and very vocal home crowd. The players run on to the pitch in high spirits. They are raring to go and for the first and only time this season huddle together in a circle, looking for that last-minute boost that will propel them into the final. Before the referee has even blown his whistle to start the game the stadium is echoing to their supporters’ war cry: ‘
Auf geht’s Bayern, schießt ein Tor!
’ Come on Bayern, give us a goal!

The Bayern players are running on pure adrenalin, but the first two moves are a foretaste of what is to come. Twenty seconds in, Ribéry takes the ball down the left wing and tries to shake off Carvajal, but Gareth Bale joins in and helps the right-back. Between them they snuff out the Frenchman’s move. All night it remains 3 v 2 in favour of Madrid whenever Bayern try to open up the wings.

Pep will confess later that even at this early stage of the game he already knew that the team was messing up. And you can see it right from the kick off. The ref blows, Madrid move the ball back through their team while Mandžukić and Müller hare off like madmen to try to win it from them. It is courageous, ambitious, but also the first clear indication that Bayern’s midfield is going to be left gaping all night, at their rival’s mercy. Pep has kept Rafinha on the bench and returned Lahm to right-back. It is a crucial error. On this, the biggest night of his Bayern career, Pep has stripped his midfield of the guy who has locked all the components together and been his best midfielder all season; the man who has imposed order on the team. Kroos, on the right, and Schweinsteiger, to the left, form the double pivote, each playing on his more natural side, but, lacking the passing finesse of Lahm, Götze and Thiago, they come off second best to their opponents. Defensively, they are outnumbered by Madrid players.

Madrid play more intelligently, albeit they don’t attempt to own the ball. Bayern bring the ball out from the back, but do so badly. They often resort to a long ball, leaving their midfielders isolated and outnumbered. The team isn’t moving forward in unison. In every zone they look and feel inferior and have failed to establish superiority. Every time they lose the ball they hand Madrid a huge opportunity and Luka Modric is performing majestically for the Spanish side. Bayern abandon their usual patient, intelligent approach and end up completely dislocated. Their poor defending as well as an apparent lack of tactical and emotional control result in the first two goals.

Bayern never give in, however, not even when Ronaldo puts away the third goal during a quick counter-attack, which Ribéry inadvertently starts by passing to Bale. Four passes later it’s a goal. By then Martínez is warming up. The German side may have lost the game but their pride is still intact. Repeatedly they try to break through, even now, 4-0 down on aggregate. Robben’s attacks down the middle help win them four corners in the space of seven minutes, but nothing comes of any of them. In the first leg Bayern had 15 corners and put seven of them on target, tonight, of the nine corners they take, only one is on target. Madrid defend splendidly and there is always a body in the way of any Bavarian shot.

Guardiola uses the break to make some changes. Martínez comes on for Mandžukić and the team moves to a 4-3-3, with Schweinsteiger at the top of a triangle ahead of Kroos and Martínez. This functions well; it helps. But it’s already too late. Now Bayern are playing the ball out from the back pretty well, they begin to control the game and their team lines are better positionally. It is tempting to reflect on how different the outcome might have been had Javi Martínez been fit enough for the entirety of both home and away games. Or if Thiago had been able to play. But in the end Bayern have to face the truth. They are going to miss out on the Champions League final – by a long way.

The Bayern supporters whistle their disapproval as Götze comes on for Ribéry, despite the fact that the Frenchman is clearly on his last legs because of his lumbago. In the coming weeks he will discover just how high a price he will pay for today’s efforts. But there is worse to come. The stadium rounds on Pep when he replaces Müller with Pizarro, the fans’ jeers and shouts making their preference for the Bavarian striker crystal clear. The Bayern support are deeply unhappy with Pep.

Later the coach assumes all the blame for the disaster. He makes no reference to his players’ requests and goes out of his way to protect them, making sure that they are left out of the post-match debate. He had abandoned the centre of the field on the very day his men were up against a pack of lions.

They’ve faced a formidable side in which Modric and Alonso, overall, have controlled the direction of the ball. Benzema has brought a superb sense of timing to his ball control whilst Bale and Ronaldo have performed brilliantly in open space, getting the ball and running at Bayern. Instead of putting a premium on superiority in the middle of the pitch with more midfielders and fewer forwards, Bayern have put the emphasis on ‘up and at ’em’, often resulting in positional inferiority.

Throughout the season Pep had often commented on the clash of cultures between his own style and the German game. After winning 3-0 in Dortmund, he said: ‘If we bombard the penalty area with shots, sure, we’ll score but we’ll never dominate the game.’ But tonight even that statement doesn’t ring true. They have put the ball into Iker Casillas’ penalty area 74 times across the 180 minutes and barely scraped half a dozen very moderate efforts on goal.

Pep had been more than clear. ‘We dominate the play when all the good players are together in the middle. And if I end up losing it won’t matter. I’ll go home happy to have done it my way.’ And yet, on this, the most important day of the season so far, he has betrayed his own belief system. He has failed to play the football he believes in and has not even attempted to build the kind of game he considers vital to attack and win. It’s true that he was perhaps missing the men best qualified to deliver his style of high-risk football, a game that must be executed with the utmost precision. Even so, it is evident that Pep’s own decision was the catalyst for this catastrophe. Today, Pep betrayed his own principles.

Several weeks before, the coach compared a football team to a glass bottle hanging by a thread. Today, the thread has broken and Bayern has come crashing down. There have been very few teams who have imploded so dramatically in such a short space of time and this defeat will mark a turning point for Guardiola. Nothing will be the same again in Germany and, if the press coverage is to be believed, in one night the Catalan has gone from national hero to a figure of scorn.

All great sportsmen have experienced monumental disasters and humiliating defeats. But the evening of April 29 is Pep’s first bitter taste of such devastating failure and the scars will be a long time healing. There are those who would argue that such suffering is necessary for the renewal of energy in the life of any sports professional. Great victory always emerges from devastating defeat, after all.

Pep is still shut up in his office with Domènec Torrent, Carles Planchart and Manel Estiarte well past midnight. Ostensibly, they are there to review the match together, but in reality his assistants are trying to boost the boss’s morale. They can see that tonight Pep is a broken man.

But they need to know how they’re going to get out of this hole. Are they going to keep moving forward or end up taking a backward step?

‘I spend the whole season refusing to use a 4-2-4. The whole season. And I decide to do it tonight, the most important night of the year. A complete fuck-up.’

62

‘I SAW PEP UTTERLY BEATEN FOR THE FIRST TIME.’

Munich, May 1, 2014

AS SHE LEFT the stadium, Rummenigge’s wife told Bayern’s most senior director how concerned she was for Pep. The coach was obviously devastated and demoralised. Kalle was equally worried. Although obviously shaken by their disastrous defeat at Real Madrid’s hands, Rummenigge was just as concerned for Pep, whom he still considered a crucial part of the club’s future. For him, the relationship is not just about supporting Pep; he is also passionate about Pep’s football philosophy, despite all its difficulties and fragility, and accepts that they are breaking with the tradition of direct attack at Bayern.

Just a week earlier, he had been taken aback by the reduced frequency of Bayern’s passing in the Braunschweig game but, at the time, Guardiola explained that he had changed tactics after seeing the state of the pitch. Rummenigge, as an executive, had been anxious to avoid external criticism undermining Pep or causing him to doubt the club’s backing for him. Of course, that was before their deadly encounter with Madrid.

This was the moment that the club’s support in Pep would be put to the test. Not long after the fateful game, I met with Rummenigge in his office and asked the obvious question: ‘Will Bayern continue to support Guardiola’s style of play after this elimination from the Champions League and despite the fact that it is so at odds with German football?’

KHR: ‘Look, when we signed Pep up we knew exactly what to expect from him. I like people who are prepared to take responsibility and Pep is responsible for the tactical decisions. He is absolutely clear about those tactics, which are based on possession of the ball. So nothing that has happened has been a big surprise. In personal terms Pep has another great advantage – he’s not a complicated man. When he prepares for matches he never forgets he’s in Germany and he always takes account of our cultural norms. Of course, we Germans are used to a more physical game. Fast, direct football is more common here, but we have added so many more strings to our bow this year. We’ve achieved high levels of possession and have performed strongly in attack. We’ve defended well and maintained the speed of our game. For one reason or another, our concentration has dipped over the last three weeks. Perhaps winning the league so early derailed the whole team or at least a few of our players. But I believe that Pep’s credibility and his ability to fulfil his responsibilities both depend on our adherence to his philosophy. We must not ask him to be anything other than he is.’

MP: ‘Surely the second leg defeat by Real Madrid was a disaster of catastrophic proportions?’

KHR: ‘I don’t deny it and on Tuesday I saw Pep utterly beaten for the first time ever. Essentially it happened because he changed some aspects of his approach without being 100% sure. He made some choices that were not really his and was furious with himself for failing to stick to his own ideas. He was very clear about that. He deserted the middle of the pitch and opted for much more direct football. He had allowed himself to be influenced by the result of the away game in the Bernabéu [as opposed to Bayern’s performance that day]. And I’ll tell you something, the criticism he received for his tactics that day were completely unfair. He played the game the same way he has done all season, looking for the ball. We just didn’t manage to score and that’s why people were so quick to condemn. If we had played the same way and scored in Madrid, everyone would have been calling Pep a genius. But it’s true; those of us who have been around this game for a long time can’t afford to be influenced too much by a goal here or there. You have to analyse the game as well. If Götze had scored in the Bernabéu, Bayern and Pep would have been praised to the hilt. But he missed and suddenly it was all a disaster. We have a problem here in Germany in that we don’t focus enough on tactics. We are content to play fast, physical, direct football. But this game can be so much more than that. There’s a reason for us winning the league with such an extraordinary lead. And that reason is Pep.’