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Pep Guardiola's Bayern Munich were comprehensively beaten by Barcelona over two-legs.

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Pep Guardiola, too clever for his own good



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Tactical genius as he may sometimes appear, there can be no doubting that Pep Guardiola got it horribly wrong in the Champions League double header against his former club, Barcelona. Despite winning the return leg at the Allianz Arena 3-2, the result was not enough to overturn a 3-0 drubbing at the Camp Nou, and Bayern crashed out of the competition 5-3 on aggregate.

It may be argued, as it should, that chasing a three goal win (at least) against the new champions of Spain was never going to be an easy task, and the fact that Bayern managed to score three was credit to them after the shambolic first leg. But this is Bayern, and this is Guardiola. The strange thing is that the Spaniard knows this team can attack whilst playing in a standard four-at-the-back: in the eight games that Bayern have played a 4-3-3 in the Bundesliga, they have scored 17 and conceded just three.

Granted, the standard of their opposition may not have been as high a calibre as Barcelona, but it proves the team have a system wherein they can attack and defend capably as a team. Against Barcelona in both legs, the defending was suicidal at times, and the high line Guardiola insisted on adopting played into Barca's hands in both of the matches. So much so that in the first game the system was abandoned after just fifteen minutes. This time it could be said they fared slightly better in scoring three and only conceding two, but by half-time, the incomparable Lionel Messi was taken off and Barca had taken their foot of the gas as they were winning 2-1; Bayern would have needed to score six without further reply to progress.

Surely Guardiola knew that the system which had failed so miserably would be a huge risk to employ again, even in a home stadium with the crowd behind them? It can't be doubted that Guardiola is one of the very top coaches of his generation: his teams over the past near decade or so play beautiful football; high intensity, with metronomic passing and a passion for goals. But part of being a great coach is to know when the pragmatist within must raise his ugly head.

The first match against Barca should never have been so open: the back three of Bayern were not the first choice that might have put in a better performance. Surely Guardiola knew this and should have played a system in which the less-adept defenders would have been more comfortable in, instead of trying to bamboozle the bamboozlers of Messi, Neymar and Suarez with a second-rate, three-man back line that gave them so much space?

I'm not, and will never be as good a coach as Guardiola. Few ever will be. But surely, surely the Bayern manager could have seen where this semi-final could go wrong with such a team selection?

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Sam publishes regular feature and tips pieces for Howtobet4free. He has a blog, crackingjabulanis.blogspot.co.uk, and can be found on Twitter by following @Gaytski.

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