In the three years since he left the club, Barcelona has never quite got over Pep Guardiola.
We know this, because each of the coaches that have followed Pep have very clearly followed Pep. First, there was the tragically short reign of his former assistant and natural heir, Tito Vilanova, who offered overt continuity until his poor health intervened. Next, there was the non-tragic but still short reign of Gerardo Martino, a very different coach to Pep, but one who was still defined in relation to him, as the anti-Pep, or, if you must, as Post-Guardiolian.
Now, after that unsuccessful spell, there has been a return to a notionally Guardiolian candidate in Luis Enrique: a former star player and B-team coach, just like his illustrious predecessor.
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Things might well have been allowed to go on like this if Guardiola could have continued merely as an idea in Barca minds—strengthened by nostalgia and miraculously separate from the near-perfect conditions in which his tenure had occurred. There need never have been any question that the ideal coach for Barcelona at any one moment was always Guardiola and anyone who wasn’t him was to be measured against him. But, then, all of a sudden, he’s actually had to go back to the club that idolizes him.
This is a game-changer, guys.
The “Barcelona vs. Bayern Munich” Champions League semifinal arrived out of the pots two weeks ago and with it a spark of reality for Barcelona. Guardiola, rather than the idea of Guardiola, will return to Camp Nou for the first time as a coach this week with Bayern and the intersection of past and present that comes with him will surely force a confrontation between the two. With his new team playing his old team, the notion that Guardiola is still the perfect man for Barca—the man against which every other candidate should be measured—will have to be either reinforced or reassessed. It can’t remain untouched and it won’t remain unquestioned.
In some ways he can almost only lose from this. Directly pitched against Luis Enrique and his Barcelona team, Pep will become human again—and therefore inherently vulnerable—as soon as he stands back out there on that Camp Nou touchline. The myth of Guardiola, dressed up by time to look unimpeachable, will be exposed as soon as the vessel it comes in turns up in person. Once he physically appears, he can’t possibly be as perfect as he’s remembered, can he? No one can or is, right?
But there is also a more tangible vulnerability in play here, too. Pep isn’t just going to be shown to be human. Despite Enrique’s surface-level Guardiolian credentials, Bayern versus Barca will be a match-up of competing ideas—near-constant variation and innovation at Bayern, up against a simple, cohesive, consistent starting 11 at Barca—and the real Pep, rather than the idea of him, could lose.
This is how things stand: post-Barca Guardiola is the man with all the answers, known both as a thinker and a tinkerer, and possessing a multitude of different lineups. Enrique, on the other hand, has committed to just one answer and one lineup in recent months, focusing on creating known quantities in his team’s defensive, midfield and attacking combinations. The difference can be summed up by one standout point: you can name five ways in which Barcelona score in almost every single game:
• High-speed counter-attacks.
• Lionel Messi drops deep on the right, cuts in and chips a pass into the penalty area for either Neymar, Luis Suarez or a midfielder to score, or for Jordi Alba to cross first time for the same result.
• A sharp one-two on the edge of the area leads to a Messi shot whipped into the bottom corner.
• Suarez or Neymar runs onto a pass between the centre-back and the fullback and either cut back to score themselves or cut back for a teammate to score.
• Dani Alves overlaps out wide, crosses from the edge of the area and someone else scores.
You can’t list five archetypal Bayern goals like this.
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Such an engrained repertoire, then, represents two things: a clear dividend from Enrique realizing that his strongest hand was to be found in playing his favourite team as often as possible, and a clear departure from Guardiola, whose lineups these days are, for better or worse, far less reliable.
That departure from Guardiola makes everything easier to see for Barcelona. If Guardiola loses the tie then his relationship with Enrique is instantly recast: his current ideas immediately look far less compelling, while Enrique’s immediately look far more appealing.
Suddenly, Pep’s shadow becomes a lot less imposing as Barcelona realizes that their new guy’s ideas have literally beaten their old guy’s. His superb history at the club wouldn’t suddenly disappear, but his assumed suitability for the coaching job at Barcelona above anyone else—and particularly Enrique—would have to be reconsidered.
If Enrique’s Barcelona wins against Bayern, then, Pep would be both human and a loser, all in one night. Maybe, just maybe, this tie is how Barcelona gets over Pep Guardiola.
Ethan Dean-Richards is a London-based writer. Follow him on Twitter