Curse of the Super-Club: Guardiola's Bayern Exposed by Porto's Pace

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Bayern Munich’s 3-1 defeat away to Porto on Wednesday was the sense of familiarity. This was last season’s Real Madrid semi-final all over again—not in a tactical sense, for Porto played very differently to Real, but in the way Bayern, faced with a team with pace who actually attacked them, buckled defensively.

Pep Guardiola’s side still has the quality to turn the game around in the second leg, but that has become a game in which there can be no slip-ups.

It has become commonplace over the past decade—partly inspired by how Sergio Busquets played for Guardiola’s Barcelona—for the deep-lying central midfielder to drop between the two central defenders to initiate attacks, something that allows the full-backs to push higher up the pitch. That was essential for Bayern to provide width, given the two forwards supporting Robert Lewandowski, Thomas Muller and Mario Gotze, naturally look to drift inside.

It’s probably a coincidence but Andre-Pierre Gignac scored his second goal in Marseille’s recent 3-2 defeat to Paris Saint-Germain when his side regained possession and were able to take advantage of a back line spread to allow Marco Verratti to initiate the play from deep. Once Marseille won the ball, the passage to goal was cleared by one simple pass. This is the danger of the ploy.

Porto didn’t even require a pass. Jackson Martinez closed down Xabi Alonso and dispossessed him, ran through and was tripped by Manuel Neuer, who was extremely fortunate not to be sent off. Ricardo Quaresma converted the penalty—but it could easily have been even worse for Bayern. The second was a similar story; Dante was caught in possession by Quaresma, who galloped through an empty half before jabbing the ball past Neuer.

Paulo Duarte/Associated Press

The third had nothing to do with anything as sophisticated as pressing, with Jerome Boateng missing a simple ball over the top that Martinez ran onto before rounding Neuer and scoring. It was a defensive error of the most basic kind, although it was perhaps the ferocity with which Porto had closed Bayern’s defenders down earlier in the game that had left Boateng discombobulated.

It might also be added that Bayern generally made themselves vulnerable to the pace of Porto’s forward line by so regularly pushing so high up the pitch. With a deeper line, there would have been no space to aim the hopeful punt that led to the third. 

Neuer often mitigates that effect of the high line by playing outside his box, operating as a sweeper-keeper to close that space, but perhaps his early caution left him wary of playing as high as he normally does. Guardiola accepts the risk of this strategy in the pursuit of excellence; on Wednesday, a number of his players panicked in the face of the pressure that brings.

Julen Lopetegui, once a team-mate of Guardiola at Barcelona, had his Porto press with great verve but also great intelligence. This wasn’t a harum-scarum charge toward the man with the ball but controlled waves; they didn’t always go, but when they went, they went with fury. That allowed them to keep pressing and playing with the same intensity for most of the game.

But as with the Real Madrid semi-final, this felt like Bayern opening themselves up, giving an adept opponent the opportunity to beat them. It’s true that Guardiola could have been more pragmatic, but this was a defeat rooted in two or perhaps three individual errors—Xabi Alonso, in fairness to him, was played into pressure.

Bayern, coasting to a third straight Bundesliga title, 10 points clear at the top, have perhaps lost their edge—the defeats to Wolfsburg and Borussia Monchengladbach since the winter break were perhaps warnings of that.

They are not used to being challenged; they are used to opponents sitting back, looking to do little more than keep the score down. Challenge them, as Wolfsburg, Gladbach and Porto did, and they have forgotten how to deal with it. A certain hardness, a certain edge, has gone.

This, perhaps, is the curse of the modern super-club: They are too dominant at home to have the craft to prosper in continental competition.