The Champions League final this year will be the eighth in a row without Pep Guardiola, which perhaps should not feel as extraordinary as it does. This is, after all, knockout competition; odd things happen. Nobody, not even in the superclub era, has a divine right to be in the final. And yet given Guardiola has won seven league titles in his nine completed seasons as a manager – and may next month make it eight out of 10 – and has managed three of the most powerful clubs in the world, it is notable. So, why? Why, since Guardiola won the Champions League with Barcelona in 2009 and 2011, do his sides keep falling a fraction short? Narrative, Will Storr’s new book The Science of Storytelling argues, is a machine for making sense of the world; it is natural to try to find reason behind the basic incoherence of existence. Nobody works harder on that quest than Guardiola, a manager renowned for his research who is forever striding through the pages of Martí Perarnau’s books clutching a portfolio of stats and diagrams under his arm. And yet even a genius such as he must struggle to find much sense…