Books Read

While Pep’s time at Bayern has been mostly interesting, I would say my biggest complaint is his insistence to over complicate the game, over strategize and in the end come out with a loss or a tie (if you are Bayern, there are not a lot of circumstances where a tie is a win). This weekends game against Bayer is no exception. The most important thing to note – there is pretty much never the right time to sit Muller on the bench. The man is a football god and when he is on the field, good things generally happen. To have Douglas Costa play in his sted in the central midfield is just plain stupidity. Fair enough, Kramer and Kempl are a threat up the middle (I am surprised Kempl was bought away by some Premier league team in January as he is a seriously under-rated player IMHO), but why waste the attacking speed and passing of Costa in the middle where he got flooded out and was wasted. There is more than enough talent in the midfield of Bayern to put up quality play making and defense.
I think sometimes Pep feels pressured to live up to his mythos and concoct some form of coaching genius and pull a rabbit out of his hat. When you coach one of the most talent rich teams in the league you pretty much have two jobs – put the players on the pitch in their positions and make sure you keep all the egos in check. It is for that reason that I long for the days of Jupp and look forward to Carlos – who seems to have understood his job as coach of highly talented players well at Real Madrid. I think the kind of stability in position and line-up he will bring will provide many of tremendous talents at Bayern more levity to do what they are already good at…