Lisbon (AFP)

By changing his system and making Manchester City play almost against nature, Pep Guardiola missed his tactical bet against Lyon on Saturday (3-1): he was eliminated from the quarterfinals of the Champions League, a known scenario which still upsets the club ambitions.

Crazy about football, we know that Guardiola is. Inhabited by the game, obsessed with its infinite tactical variations, always in search of perfection, his "football IQ" is obviously not in question.

But if his first years on the bench in Barcelona were crowned by two coronations in C1, in 2009 and 2011, he never spent the half in three tests with Bayern Munich. With City, it's worse: he can no longer even pass the quarters, with three successive eliminations.

"The years go by but the results are the same", sighed, almost resigned, Kevin De Bruyne who had given hope to his family by equalizing against Lyon.

What is striking in this black series is the recurrence of the same pattern: suddenly, after a whole season of playing, and playing well, with one or two major systems, "Pep" pulls out of his hat a composition that takes it by surprise. all observers.

Against Lyon, it consisted of moving to three central defenders to copy the organization of his opponent.

- City started "à la Mourinho" -

A team "à la Mourinho", commented, not without justice, the website The Athletic. In other words, an "anti-Guardiola" team as possible.

"We tried to strengthen on our weak points compared to their strong points, such as the fact that they attack very well on the wings. And I did not want to let them develop their game," he said. explained after the game.

Guardiola had said over and over before the match that we should be wary of Lyon, that OL were better than the sometimes condescending comments that had accompanied his recent performances.

The risk of overconfidence from his players, after being the first to bring down Real Madrid from Zinédine Zidane in the eighth (2-1, 2-1) in the Champions League, was, after all, real.

But, given his starting XI, an apparently incongruous question creeps in: were Manchester City afraid of Lyon?

During the first 20-25 minutes, the "Citizens" were very laborious and it was not until the return to a more classic 4-3-3 pattern, at the hour mark, to regain their usual fluidity.

"In knockout matches, Pep (...) is always torn between paying attention and respecting the strengths of the opponent, and keeping his beliefs and a system in which he believes," had Thomas Müller (Bayern Munich) explained to The Athletic in February about the Catalan.

- Between tactical genius and gamberge -

"Sometimes it is not 100% clear what to do," added the player.

"A knockout match is a final, you have to play on your strength and you should not experiment. He weakened his team for 60 minutes," said Lothar Matthäus, former Ballon d'Or and consultant for Sky in Germany.

Unfortunately, nothing seems to indicate that Guardiola intends to make his self-criticism on this point.

"This competition, we know it, in the surfaces you have to be serious and not concede a goal (...) Statistics show that we were good, but that was not enough", he said dropped after the game.

So yes, we can point to the misalignment and the lack of withdrawal of Kyle Walker on the opening of the score, the loss of ball in a dangerous zone on the second goal and, of course, the incredible failure of Raheem Sterling on a ball 2-2, 59 seconds before Moussa Dembélé folds the match.

But if Guardiola wants to taste the Grail one day and finally take City to the roof of Europe, he will no doubt have to manage to draw the line between tactical genius and gamberge.

© 2020 AFP