It's Champions League or Nothing for Pep Guardiola and Bayern Munich This Season

Things couldn’t be going better for Bayern Munich right now. Qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League, walking to another Bundesliga title and quite likely to have their pick of the bunch in the coming January transfer window. 

As Sky Sport and multiple others reported last week, Bayern chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge was once again full of praise for the Spanish manager, claiming that Pep Guardiola had a job in Munich for life should he want to stick around.

“Bayern are never going to sack Pep Guardiola,” he reportedly told German paper Welt am Sonntag. “I can even put that in writing for you.”

Yet beyond the apparent love-in between the Bayern hierarchy, one wonders whether Rummenigge may have been thinking a little too long term when considering Guardiola’s untouchable reputation. 

There’s plenty that can still happen between now and May that could turn the in-form manager’s favour among the Allianz Arena faithful. 

The Bundesliga is done. Dortmund are long gone, Gladbach and Bayer Leverkusen will fight for fourth place with Schalke and Wolfsburg really should finish second unless they (quite characteristically) implode. Bayern have won, it’s done. Forget it. 

Unfortunately such a scenario isn’t unheard of in German football and as such Bayern fans are quite regularly left feeling a little unsatisfied with just a simple league win. This club usually deserves more and thus their fans demand more. 

The Bundesliga, for all its worth and prestige over the past few decades, is quite simply the minimum expectations of any Bayern manager. 

For Guardiola to truly reach his expectations and keep fans happy next summer, this expensively assembled squad of superstars will have to lock horns with Europe’s best and prove that the team on the pitch matches a club with few equals in terms of size and finance off it.

Which may in itself cause some problems. 

Jon Super/Associated Press

Bayern may be the undisputed team to beat within the Bundesliga these days, but many would put them second, third or maybe even fourth in terms of ranking the best teams in Europe at this moment in time. 

Guardiola has smashed Dortmund, won the German Cup and walked to his first Bundesliga title but when you ask Bayern fans what they remember over the past 12 months, they’ll tell you that they still lament that semi-final defeat to Real Madrid. When the Galacticos came to Munich and duly put Bayern in their place with a 4-0 win over Guardiola’s side. 

The German champions were put in their place that day and will remain there until the club and this manager can go one step further in the Champions League this season. 

Carlo Ancelotti remains at Madrid, a side who look as strong as ever despite losing Angel Di Maria and notable others, while Barcelona finally have Neymar and Lionel Messi clicking and scoring aplenty. Throw in a Chelsea side under the command of Jose Mourinho and a possibly rejuvenated Manchester City squad and Bayern have multiple hurdles to jump before they even consider challenging for the competition. 

Once mockingly known among opposing and supporting fans alike as “FC Hollywood,” Bayern have since become a scene of serenity and logical thought among the chaos-ridden scenarios at other larger clubs such as Dortmund, Schalke and even Hamburg. 

Yet that doesn’t mean they’re above sacking a manager who they once deemed un-sackable.

Bayern Munich are quite simply defined by what they achieve in Europe and if Guardiola can’t provide that, then he’ll follow the same fate other former favourites at the club and Rummenigge may have to rip up that signed letter stating otherwise. 

@Sbienkowski