Manchester City will continue their Champions League campaign on Tuesday when they face Atletico Madrid in the first leg of an eagerly anticipated quarter-final tie.
The Blues have never come up against the reigning LaLiga champions in a competitive fixture before, and they will need to be at their best if they are to advance to the semi-finals. Diego Simeone's side — despite enduring an underwhelming season — are famously tough to beat in Europe and will not make things easy.
The fiery Argentine has been in charge of Atleti since 2011 but Guardiola has only faced him three times in his managerial career. The last time their teams met, almost six years ago, should serve as a warning for the City boss.
The evening on May 3, 2016, remains perhaps the most painful evening of Guardiola's career. His Bayern Munich side defeated Atletico 2-1 in a Champions League semi-final second leg, but it was not enough.
Having lost 1-0 in Madrid — a game in which Guardiola got his tactics wrong and Bayern were lucky not to lose by more — and conceded in Bavaria, Bayern were eliminated on away goals. Guardiola's side could hardly have been more dominant in Munich; they enjoyed 73 per cent possession and took 33 shots to Atleti's seven, yet they suffered semi-final elimination for the third consecutive season.
Sometimes, 'that's just football' is the only thing to say in the wake of such inexplicable defeats. Bayern had taken a first-half lead through a Xabi Alonso penalty, before Thomas Muller missed what turned out to be a crucial penalty.
After half-time, Atletico hit Bayern with a deadly counter-attack, the Achille's heal of all Guardiola sides, not least City. Robert Lewandowski levelled the aggregate score with 16 minutes left, but that was that. Guardiola won three Bundesliga titles in three seasons at Bayern, but not the Champions League he had hoped for.
That game against Simeone's Atletico has arguably had a lasting impact on Pep, something we've seen at City's expense. So desperate is Guardiola not to suffer a repeat that he has developed a habit of making out-of-character adjustments to his teams to try and combat the opponent's threat.
These changes have backfired spectacularly on three occasions at City, giving rise to the 'Pep over-thinking' theory. In the quarter-finals in 2018 he opted for a midfield diamond against Liverpool at Anfield; City were 0-3 down after 30 minutes.
At the same stage in 2020, he employed a three at the back system to try and match Lyon's own set-up and limit counter-attacks. His players weren't used to the system and appeared all at sea; City lost 3-1.
In the final defeat to Chelsea last season he left both Rodri and Fernandinho on the bench as he opted against selecting an out-and-out holding midfielder — the idea being that City would be able to more easily control possession. In reality City's centre-backs were left exposed.
In the build-up to Tuesday's match, much has been made of Atletico's compact, low-block defence and how City could struggle to penetrate it. The truth is though, the Blues overcome such obstacles on a near weekly basis.
The biggest threat to City's progression is Guardiola's temptation to overcompensate for potential threats, thus creating new ones. If he keeps his team as it is and employs his usual safeguards against counter-attacks, then City should advance.
But when you're the greatest tactician in the world, the temptation to come up with some new innovative solution must be hard to resist.
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