The best teams in Europe are expected to thrive in the Champions League and those that fall short leave their managers to answer for their failures, sometimes even with their jobs.
Just three months after Real Madrid won the 2024 Champions League, 36 teams across Europe are set to compete for the chance to lift the ultimate prize in club soccer. Only squads with world-class players and managers, though, can make a winning run in the UCL.
Carlo Ancelotti and Pep Guardiola are the last two managers to lead their teams to European glory and both Los Blancos and Manchester City are unsurprisingly the favorites to win the 2024–25 Champions League.
Some of the other biggest clubs in the world, like PSG, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, also have great European ambitions, so much so that their managers are already under pressure before the tournament even kicks off.
Luis Enrique – Paris Saint-Germain
Luis Enrique is firmly on the hot seat ahead of PSG’s 2024–25 Champions League campaign. The 54-year-old enjoyed plenty of success last year as he led Les Parisiens to a domestic treble in his first season in charge, but he also failed to deliver the one title PSG is desperate to claim—the Champions League trophy.
Plenty of questions surrounded the manager after his side could not get past an inferior Borussia Dortmund team in the UCL semifinals. PSG failed to score a single goal in both legs of the tie and saw its hopes of making just its second ever Champions League final disappear in front of a packed Parc des Princes.
Enrique has only won the Champions League once before, and that was with Barcelona in 2015, led by Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez, Neymar and Andrés Iniesta.
Despite a difficult league phase schedule featuring matches with Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Atletico Madrid and Arsenal, Enrique is still expected to get his team to the final or risk another year coined as a failure.
Hansi Flick – Barcelona
Hansi Flick topped Europe with Bayern Munich back in 2020 and now, he is expected to bring Champions League success back to Barcelona in his first season in charge.
The 27-time La Liga champions have not won the Champions League in a decade and their recent results in the competition have been far below their standards. The Catalans failed to get out of the group stage in their 2021–22 and 2022–23 campaigns, and have not made a semifinal since 2019.
Expectations are always high at Barcelona, but Flick’s experience in the tournament combined with his side’s youthful talent sets the bar higher than it had been under Xavi Hernández or Ronald Koeman. If the German manager cannot at least get past the quarterfinals with a team that has not dropped any points in La Liga and features four Euro 2024 champions, then he can expect loud and harsh criticism.
Vincent Kompany – Bayern Munich
Bayern Munich is coming off its worst season since 2012. Despite signing Harry Kane, Bayern Munich failed to win a single trophy, finishing third in the Bundesliga and exiting the Champions League in the semifinals after collapsing against Real Madrid.
The club bid farewell to Thomas Tuchel and appointed Vincent Kompany as Bayern Munich’s new manager just one season after his poor Premier League tenure in charge of Burnley.
Kompany’s lack of coaching experience, especially at the Champions League level, puts a target on his back during Bayern Munich’s European campaign that could get bigger and bigger if his side stumbles against PSG and Barcelona in the league phase.
After Bayern Munich’s heartbreaking UCL exit last year, anything below reaching the semifinals again will be deemed a massive step back for the club that just won the tournament back in 2020.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Three Managers Under the Most Pressure Entering the 2024–25 Champions League .
