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"After that game (a 1-0 defeat away to Atletico Madrid in the first leg of the Champions League semifinals), everybody killed me. But I'm not dead just yet, my friends," Pep Guardiola said ahead of the weekend's draw with Borussia Monchengladbach. "I still have one bullet."
Guardiola's defiant line was delivered with a smile and a shrug but it's an interesting analogy and insight into his mind, invoking the scene of a classic Western showdown. The Catalan, who rode into town as the most feared gunslinger in the land almost three years ago, feels like he is surrounded by enemies at the moment: Diego Simeone and his Atletico gang at the front, and his critics creeping up behind him. Guardiola has just one bullet left on Tuesday night. Can he use it well?
For Bayern's coach, the second leg represents a final before the final; the opening line to his epitaph in Munich. If he loses, draws, or wins by the wrong margin, it'll be three semifinal exits against Spanish opposition in row, with a hat trick of away defeats that will neatly encapsulate his various perceived failures as a manager in Germany.
He overthought things tactically by leaving out talisman Thomas Muller (for this season's defeat to Atletico), they will say. A line-up with three at the back and man-to-man marking might have made sense on the blackboard but not in the real world of the Camp Nou (a 3-0 defeat by Barcelona in 2015), they will say. Bayern may have dominated possession to make Real Madrid look like a small team on their own patch (a 1-0 defeat at the Bernabeu in 2015), they will recall, but where was the urgency and power in the final third of the Jupp Heynckes' years?
Munich is a town where only results, not performances, truly matter. And the only results that have really mattered are the ones in the Champions League. That's partly Guardiola's own fault, of course. The relentless intensity of his training regime and detailed preparations made the best squad in the Bundesliga nearly unbeatable, delivering league three titles in a row. But the more they won, the less his work was appreciated.
"It's the main reason why he's leaving at the end of the season," one influential Bayern official told ESPN FC. "He feels that nothing but the Treble is considered good enough."
On top of that, Guardiola is frustrated that Germans still don't truly, fully, deeply understand what he's doing. Leaving out the unpredictable Muller in favour of more control in midfield last week made obvious sense in his mind, because control is the foundation of his game. Control means possession, possession means you're exerting pressure on the opposition, pressure makes the opposition tired until they concede chances and fall apart late on in the game.
Countless wins in Bayern's history have come late on -- indeed, they were known for their luck as well as for their patience -- but a distinct lack of luck in the UCL semifinals has seen the patience with Guardiola's approach run thin. The instinct of critics and fans has been to demand more action and more attacking play.
"In Germany, people think that you will score more goals if you put more strikers on," Guardiola lamented earlier this season. "They say you defend well if you have 11 men in the box, like Bayern had Giovanni Trapattoni and Ottmar Hitzfeld," he lamented just last Monday. "But my idea is completely different. I like to defend by playing the game 40 metres away from our goal."
It's as if Bayern hired Picasso but insist he'll continue to paint in the style of the old masters. TV pundit Mehmet Scholl even professed a longing for the days when Jens Jeremies, a hard working "water-carrier", patrolled the Bayern midfield.
vGuardiola will only beat his doubters if his ideas deliver the Champions League trophy, he knows that there's no alternative. The pressure might have been bearing down on him at a less unforgiving level if he had made himself more likeable and accessible in Munich.
The chief football writer of kicker, Karl-Heinz Wild, wrote on Monday that the coach had "human and psychological deficits." Part of that accusation might have been motivated by a journalistic sense of disappointment about Guardiola's aloofness, but that isn't to say Wild was completely wrong.
Inside the club and the dressing room, the Spaniard will not be remembered as the warmest of leaders. But he doesn't have to be. Bayern decided to see beyond that and hired him for his expertise instead -- though the lack of strong emotional ties between players and manager becomes another stick to beat him with if they don't make it to the Champions League final.
For Guardiola, a man with strong convictions but who also has a tendency to second (and triple) guess his battleplans up to a few hours before kick-off, the clamour for Muller's inclusion on Tuesday night poses an interesting dilemma. Will he give the crowd what they want even if he doesn't quite believe it's the right thing to do?
There have been anxious whispers in Munich that he has been considering another starting XI without the Germany forward, endangering a public riot. If Muller starts from the bench, everybody will blame the manager even more if Bayern get eliminated. But should that be a consideration?
It's not easy when all you've got is one last bullet. If Guardiola wants to ride out of town to Manchester City with his reputation intact, he can't afford to miss out on the Champions League final again.