The Catalan coach deserves more respect for dominating English and German football, even though Europe's biggest prize has eluded him since 2011
Revisionists will tell you that Pep Guardiola was a failure at Bayern Munich because he did not win the Champions League. They are lying. Rival fans will tell you that he will be a failure at Manchester City unless he wins Europe's biggest prize. They too are lying.
It cannot be denied that not lifting the European Cup since toppling Manchester United with Barcelona in 2009 and 2011 sticks in Guardiola's craw. A coach of his pedigree and with the squads he has had at his disposal should have won it more often.
But in knockout football there are so many unknown factors, chance events which can mean the difference between a place in the history books and being left empty handed.
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The league table, however, does not lie. Throughout the course of a season, you have the opportunity to make amends for freak results, and at both Bayern and City, and indeed Barcelona before then, Guardiola has swept the competition aside.
And so no matter what happens in City's blockbuster quarter-final tie against Bayern and old friend Thomas Tuchel, Guardiola deserves more respect for what he has done at both clubs. His astonishing achievements cannot be dismissed due to a series of mishaps in Europe.
Getty ImagesThe fastest Bundesliga title win
When the Catalan took over at Bayern in 2013, refreshed after taking a sabbatical in New York following four intense years with Barcelona, he inherited a team that had just won the treble under predecessor Jupp Heynckes and broke the record for winning the Bundesliga at the earliest possible stage.
Sounds ideal right? Not exactly. Sir Alex Ferguson has spoken on numerous occasions of the difficulty in keeping a successful team motivated. Vicente del Bosque, meanwhile, admitted that he could see that his Spain players were not motivated after winning the World Cup and back-to-back European Championships.
But Guardiola managed to make a world-beating team even better domestically, wrapping up the title in March 2014 after 27 games, setting a new record for the fastest Bundesliga win and finishing the season with 90 points, 19 ahead of Jurgen Klopp's Borussia Dortmund in second.
His side also set a record for earning the most points in the first half of the season, taking an astonishing 47 from a possible 51. Bayern then completed the double by comprehensively beating Dortmund 2-0 in the DFB-Pokal final.
The only sour note of an otherwise dream first season was losing 5-0 on aggregate to Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-finals, after knocking out Arsenal and Manchester United earlier in the competition.
AdvertisementGetty ImagesAnother title but more European pain
The following season, Guardiola became the first Bayern manager to retain the Bundesliga title since Felix Magath in 2006.
His side were not as ruthless as in the first campaign, picking up just 79 points, but still finished 10 ahead of closest challengers Wolfsburg.
Bayern enjoyed some great European nights, thrashing Shakhtar Donetsk 7-0 in the last 16 and hammering Porto 6-1 in the quarter-finals, although there was more heartache against a Spanish team in the semi-finals.
In an emotional first match against his beloved Barcelona, Pep's Bayern were beaten 3-0 at the Camp Nou, and though they won the second leg 3-2, they went out 5-3 on aggregate.
It was a heavy defeat, but luck was definitely not on his side, as Arjen Robben, David Alaba and Franck Ribery all missed both legs, while Robert Lewandowski played while wearing a mask after breaking his jaw.
Barca, meanwhile, had a full squad available and were firing on all cylinders in the first season of the magical 'MSN' forward line of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar.
Bayern also missed out on the domestic cup, being beaten on penalties in the semi-finals by Dortmund. All in all, it was Guardiola's worst season in Munich, but still a pretty good one.
Getty ImagesA trophy-laden legacy and a sack full of records
Bayern came back with a vengeance the following season, sweeping to the title with 88 points. And they were agonisingly close to making the Champions League final, losing out on away goals to Atletico Madrid in the semi-finals after Thomas Muller had missed a penalty and his team had 35 shots, 12 on target.
Guardiola, who had already agreed to join City, still ended his tenure on a high by winning the DFB-Pokal, beating Thomas Tuchel's Dortmund in the final on penalties.
He left Bayern having won five out of six domestic trophies, plus the UEFA Super Cup and the Club World Cup.
Guardiolaās Bayern scored a record 254 goals in 102 league matches while conceding just 58. They also kept 59 clean sheets – another record.
He won 82 out of 104 games, a win percentage of 80.4 which destroyed that of his closest challenger, Ottmar Hitzfeld (58.4%).
Guardiola's Bayern did not just win the Bundesliga, they utterly destroyed the opposition.
Getty ImagesA serene era in Bavaria compared to his successors
And it is easy to forget that before he arrived, the German title race was far from the cakewalk it has become for Bayern in the last decade.
They failed to win the title in 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2012. In 2011, only two years before Guardiola joined, they came third.
Guardiola's three-year tenure might not sound long either, but by Bayern standards, it was Ferguson-esque.
His three years in charge make him their longest-serving manager since Hitzfeld, who spent six years at the helm between 1998 and 2004.
Since the Catalan swapped Bavaria for Manchester, Carlo Ancelotti and Niko Kovac lasted little more than a year.
Hansi Flick was given less than two years despite winning the treble, while Julian Nagelsmann was replaced by Thomas Tuchel in March as he was in danger of losing the Bundesliga title to Dortmund.
Compared to his successors, Pep's time at Bayern was stable and serene and the the Bundesliga crown, which Bayern hold so dear, was never in doubt.