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#3 He arguably made Bayern Munich worse
Okay, so Guardiola won the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich in all three of his seasons at the Allianz, but did he really make them any better during his reign? I’d actually argue no, and some have even argued that somehow, he actually made them worse. Granted, in his first season – 2013/14 – his Bayern team won the league by a record amount of points, but the record belonged to Jupp Heynckes’s Bayern the season prior – and that side also won the Champions League.
Basically, Bayern were already hugely dominant over the Bundesliga before Pep arrived, and obviously, his signing of the top players from their closest rivals Borussia Dortmund only made that domination larger. Essentially then, you’ve got to look at the results Bayern had in Europe to make a fair judgment, and when you do that, it could be argued that if anything, he actually made Bayern worse during his time there.
In his first season Bayern made the semi-finals of the Champions League but were comfortably put to the sword there by his old rivals Real Madrid – who put five past Munich over the two legs and didn’t concede one.
And in his second season, while he made the semi-finals again, not only did his side lose to Barcelona in the semis, but they also suffered a 1-3 first-leg defeat to Porto in the quarters at home. Granted they won the second leg 6-1, but it’s Porto, hardly Real Madrid. And in his final season it was another semi-final loss to a Spanish side – this time Atletico Madrid – but Bayern also stumbled in games with Juventus and Arsenal, who they’d comfortably defeated just a couple of years prior.
Add in the fact that the chasing Bundesliga sides – Dortmund in 2015/16 and Wolfsburg in 2014/15 – managed to cut the gap to just ten points compared to nineteen in Pep’s first season, despite Bayern continuing to splash the cash – and you could argue that he didn’t improve them at all and perhaps made them worse.
