Carlo Ancelotti is the great pragmatist standing in Pep Guardiola’s path again

I t is a little over nine years since Pep Guardiola first took on Carlo Ancelotti as a manager. Guardiola’s Bayern Munich had sealed the Bundesliga title almost a month earlier, often registering 1,000 passes in a game, and his football seemed unstoppable. For 18 minutes in the first leg at the Bernabéu, Bayern continued to seem imperious. Then Ancelotti’s Real Madrid countered and Fábio Coentrão squared for Karim Benzema to score. Bayern continued to dominate the ball; Madrid continued to look dangerous. It finished 1-0.

In retrospect, before Guardiola and Ancelotti meet in another semi‑final at the Bernabéu on Tuesday, that game seems a defining moment. What had happened in the semi-finals against Internazionale in 2010 and Chelsea in 2012, a Guardiola team bossing possession and being caught on the counter, had happened again – and this time without the same sense of outrageous bad luck.

During dinner after that game in Madrid, Guardiola decided he would play a 3-4-3 in the home leg but, worried his side hadn’t played a back three since the December, he changed his mind on the flight home to a 4-2-3-1 that would liberate Arjen Robben and Franck Ribéry.

That Friday, Tito Vilanova, Guardiola’s friend and former assistant, died. The next day, Bayern beat Werder Bremen 5-2. At training on Monday, Guardiola asked his players how they felt: they were excited, confident. They urged him to let them attack. He agreed, substituting his 4-2-3-1 for a 4-2-4.

It was, he later said, “the biggest fuck-up” of his career. Madrid sat deep, counterattacked at pace through Ángel Di María, and won 4-0 thanks to three goals from set plays.

Ancelotti, the affable pragmatist, had beaten Guardiola, the intense idealist. Last year, at the