Real Madrid shut down Barcelona in their own half but failed to win.
Whether it’s a La Liga, Champions League, Copa del Rey or friendly match, il Classic is always the Classic. The first leg of the Copa del Rey semi-finals was played at the Bernabeu last night, with a video quality that recalls the good old days of the matches between Guardiola and Mourinho, between Dani Alves and Marcelo, between Messi and Ronaldo. The first match was won by Xavi’s team, in a game with a crazy rhythm – albeit without the excellent quality we would have expected – but, above all, particularly bizarre.
In fact, since Guardiola’s arrival, the Clásico has almost always been played in this way: Barcelona control the ball and the pitch and Real Madrid hole up in their own half to take up space and restart on the counterattack. Yesterday, however, it seemed that the two teams had exchanged shirts, because the course was exactly the opposite. Never was the more apt meme by Giovanni Storti in which he says that “the situation is being reversed”. Let’s analyze in more detail how it went.
The Real Madrid formation is more or less what was expected: 4-3-3 on paper, even if it was more of a 4-2-3-1, with Courtois in goal, Carvajal, Militao, Rudiger and Nacho in defense, a midfielder made up of Camavinga (Tchouameni was not yet at his best), Kroos and Modric, and a trident with Valverde, Benzema and Vinicius. There was definitely more curiosity about Xavi’s choices, despite the enormous limitations caused by the many important injuries. In addition to the well-known absences of Dembélé, Pedri and Lewandowski, in fact, there was also a problem for Christensen, who was taken to the bench anyway. Xavi’s 4-3-3 was therefore as follows: ter Stegen in goal, Araújo, Koundé, Alonso and Balde in defence, Busquets, de Jong and Kessié in midfield, trident with Raphinha, Ferran Torres and Gavi.
However, the structure of the Catalans in the possession phase is different from that proposed by the graphicsbecause for a couple of months now Barça has been playing with the box-midfield as they say in English, that is a four-man midfield in which the interpreters form a square. To arrive at this structure, Gavi, who starts from the left winger, enters the field in the left midfield, while the right midfielder gets up in the right midfield.
The big surprise was the position of de Jong and Kessié: the Dutchman usually plays in the front row of this square alongside Busquets to have as much quality as possible in the build-up, with the former Milan player playing further up both to not involve him too much in possession and to take advantage of his insertions in the area . A move that foreshadowed a Xavi less willing to have control of the ball and more inclined to give cover to the defensive line.
For some time now, Ancelotti’s team has been finding great difficulty when they have to press their opponents high, especially since Kroos and Modric in the midfield are no longer able to provide the dynamism they once had and find it very difficult to cover large portions of the pitch. Nonetheless, Real’s first pressure was high, aggressive and effective. Most of the time the structure was the following: Benzema on Koundé, Valverde closing on Marcos Alonso, Carvajal getting up on Balde, while the three midfielders man-marked their direct opponents.
As you can see from the image, Barcelona only have two outlets: the first is the one on Araújo – as always deployed as a full-back in the classics to look after Vinicius – because Ancelotti does not consider him a threat under construction and prefers to keep Vinicius closer to cover the midfield and then come out on the Uruguayan when he receives the ball; the second is the one directed at Ferran because Real Madrid in fact leave the central corridor completely free. If Rudiger doesn’t come out on Ferran, the Spaniard can receive freely, if Rudiger comes out on Ferran, Barça can attack behind him with a deep ball for Raphinha.
Xavi prepared the match in this way, as also stated in the press conference: play upright and attack in the opposite half of the pitch. Sometimes it was an effective solution, when Ter Stegen was able to find Ferran Barcelona had space to attack accompanied the action with many men.
In most cases, however, the pressure from Real Madrid was effective and Barcelona were unable to play the ball as they normally do. The reason is very simple: lacked quality. Alonso and Kessié are not Barcelona players from a dribbling point of view, especially if we consider that the Ivorian had to replace the Catalans’ brightest light, as well as the most important player for the entire game model: Pedri. To this must be added the speech made previously on Araújo which allowed Real to play de facto in numerical superiority in the ball area. In short: Real could press very high without too many worries, force Barcelona into a turnover or a long ball and establish themselves in the opposing half.
As previously mentioned, Xavi has been moving Araújo up the wing for some time now when he takes on Madrid, as the Uruguayan has shown he can be Vinicius’ kryptonite. After a few matches dominated by the Catalan, Ancelotti tried to find countermeasures moving Vinicius more centrally to remove him from the grip of Araújo, or to drag him away from his area, and create space on the left. In yesterday’s match the marking was clearly a man and, therefore, i Blancos they could find space to attack on the left. The problem is that he played on that band Nacho, a player certainly of experience, ductility and reliability, but certainly not a threatening player in the opposing half. Barcelona were therefore more than calm in letting him receive with space, because in the worst case a 1vs1 situation was created with Raphinha (very punctual in running backwards) not really dangerous.
In the second half, Ancelotti tried to fix this problem by mainly widening Benzema to make him combine with Vinicius and increase the danger on that side, but this choice had no effect due to the monumental individual performances of the Blaugrana defenders.
To put it in musical terms, the bridge of the match – i.e. that section of the song which has no analogies with the canonical ones – was between the 20th and 25th of the first half, when Barcelona managed to find a little more fluidity in dribbling, gaining ground and consequently pressing higher and better on the possession of Real Madrid. It is no coincidence that the decisive goal arrived at this moment of the match and thanks to one well organized pressuredespite the many faults of Camavinga.
The former Rennes player found himself in a situation without horizontal and vertical passing lines, for which he was forced to turn around to look for a back pass while both Gavi and Kessié were at his ankles. The back pass for Rudiger was a credible solution, but the pass, slow and misdirected, allowed Ferran to intercept, attack the line and serve Kessié who, with a little luck, finds the goal – or rather, Militao’s own goal – decisive.
From then on until the end of the race it was almost of a one-way match played in the Barcelona half. In fact, Xavi’s team was no longer able to overcome the fierce pressure, either with dribbling or with long balls blanca. Usually in these situations, usually rare, Xavi’s team panics because she’s not used to and trained to handle extended moments of positional defense. Yesterday however, things turned out differently: Barça played a careful and aggressive game in the duels without conceding a single shot on goal to Real.
It was, in a sense, a Barça cholistao mourinhanoto resume the memorable Clásicos of early 2010. The image below shows the assault attempted by Ancelotti’s team and the defense to the bitter end by Xavi’s team; all the outfield players (except Modric, a little further back) were playing in a very tight space.
At the beginning of the article, I quoted Giovanni Storti’s famous meme about the situation being reversed. In this regard, it will be enough for you to know that the data on ball possession (with all due respect to Caressa) reads 65% for Real Madrid. Barcelona’s 35% is the lowest since the arrival of Pep Guardiola in 2008. In the press conference, Ancelotti said he was happy with the performance despite the little actual danger, stating that Barcelona absolutely did not demonstrate victory. Xavi, on the other hand, is said displeased of the management of the ball and of having completely left the field to the opponents. It will certainly be true, but the choice of Kessié in the midfield instead of de Jong (certainly conservative and not aimed at dribbling) suggests that the idea of playing a more defensive game than usual was there from the beginning .