Tactical Analysis : Real Madrid 3-3 Manchester City | A Classic at the Bernabeu

Guardiola's structured approach versus Angelotti's fluid football promised another

classic

encounter and they did not disappoint as the three-way draw was blessed by several world-class goals, but what were the

tactical

plans of both sides? Let's start with City on the ball when City were looking to build. Those of Deep Madrid were in an aggressive 442 ready to pressure the center backs with the wingers supporting the press and eliminating any easy exit option with limited space in depth and in the midfield City tried to enlarge the field and this was allowing Harland to remain very high up the pitch on goal kicks where there is no offside rule, which would naturally force Madrid's defensive line to drop a little deeper.

City had success with the longer ball towards Harland, but this was rare as throughout the match Rudiger had the advantage. in this one-on-one duel and it is interesting that Harland did not choose to position himself in the unnatural central defender, City sought to take advantage of the side effect of Harland making the field larger by pushing the Stones further into midfield, so they could look overload Real there, however, the full-backs were key, as well as the wingers, to avoid this overload, as they had to position themselves to be ready to press the winger or the midfielder, depending on where City got the ball in open play . defending in a modified 442 that looked like this with Bellingham ready to back up the press with venicius and cros and kaminga could be aggressive in closing down the men in midfield to prevent City from having easy access to these regions and these pressure traps center worked well. and Bernardo Silva was often on the receiving end of this and where he is generally ultra confident in possession, he was dispossessed in some dangerous positions, for the most part City developed in a three box shape, however it was much more fluid than usual.

As the players were not rigidly stuck in positions and the midfield in particular could adapt their shape as needed if cros and kaminga were in the deeper men, it now gave City the two-on-one advantage in these areas and we saw them grab the ball a lot. more and if cingo jumped forward to try to stop the progressive play on several occasions we saw foden and kovage have the two against one and at the beginning of the match they were able to get between the lines quite easily but they were not able to take full advantage. From these situations it should be noted that in this form Kovic seemed uncomfortable in these higher positions since he prefers to be in depth controlling the game and as a result, as the match progressed we saw Stones being the man who pushed higher, allowing Kovic staying deep of course, suited to City's attempt to overload the midfield and Valverde was key to this as he rarely defended out wide and neither did Rodrigo as Valverde's main role was to pick out a midfield man with City attacking mainly from the right hand.

What was interesting is that the

real

back four were not obsessed with being compact and both Kaja and Mendy in particular could be quite man-orientated, leaving this giant space between the defender and the centre-back, traditionally this would mean huge danger as he ran the half-space. would be at City, however, Tony Cros was very disciplined in this encounter, dropping extremely deep with Vodden to avoid Bas's half-run or if the Englishman looked to grab the ball, he was always in close pursuit, but of course Of course, Cros was not always successful. For this, particularly in the second half, when Stones had much more freedom to push up the pitch, as once again City's midfield was not hyper fixated on its form, so Stones often played the third man ran towards the half-space looking to enter. ball or creating space and we saw this in the run-up to City's move when the stones in the half-space attract Tony Crow, giving Foden a rare space to take his shot as the match progressed, we saw Foden and Sila would rotate a lot more to allow first Sila would have more control in the middle and Foden would have more isolations against his man this season, particularly when Walker was playing.

We had seen Pep much more willing to overlap Walker to allow him to have more men in the central areas, but of course. That is not the natural play of a kani, but in the second half we saw him move higher on the right side to allow both Foden and Silver in these areas to increase that overload against Crow to look to get into a more threatening position and these overloads On the right side they would drag Real, releasing the change to Greish and then isolating Cajal, which caused some threatening moments. However, Madrid looked lethal in the transition led by Venicius Bellingham and Rodrigo City's fluid midfield meant they had to double pivot at times, but as it was discussed Stones could be higher up, meaning in more On one occasion Rodri was isolated.

Real were very effective on the counter-attack because we saw them look to go straight to par on more than one occasion and the threat of that long war meant that the centre-backs had to take into account that Venicius could simply run behind, what this now meant was that Venicius also had the freedom to drop deeper into midfield and the central defenders were always too slow and never physical enough with the man to disrupt the Constructor's play from the actual spot. So we saw him receive in a lot of space for Rodrigo, giving Venicius the option to run behind and receive or run much more centrally and give Rodrigo the opportunity to have one on one against Akanji and either way we were now happy in these scenarios . as we saw in their second goal, but what they were

real

ly looking to do in attacking possession, Real's attacking shape was very much a 442 with Bellingham often looking to join Venicius City, they were looking to be aggressive in their own press, taking on man to man with Kos. and Kaminga make midfield play extremely difficult.

Real could take advantage of this by wobbling those pivots and creating a huge gap in midfield for Venicius or Bellingham to drop into and this would subsequently drag a centre-back out of position once again. creating opportunities for the running power of their three forwards against City's slow back four, but despite the potential space in midfield he was not Real's main pro, whether in transition or controlling possession, His plan from the beginning was to advance as often as possible. and City's Highline only helped this as Venicius Bellingham Rodrigo and even Carvajal were at times more than happy to try and make runs to find themselves behind and again City's defense looked sloppy at times when Real had a lot of possession, but particularly Cajal seeks to hold on. the width with the aim of making the field as wide as possible and forcing the City defense not to be compact.

The side effect of this was that it would allow the bde lights to move further into the midfield area, while Rodrigo could become a third striker alongside Venicius and Bellingham. Seeking to create overloads in those regions due to the danger of potential overload in these areas, both Aangi and Garcial would continue to defend extremely narrowly, so Greish and Sila had to be extremely disciplined to help the defense, meaning that The defensive Shadee could sometimes seem a bit 622 with City forced into this shape, they really had options as they could still overload the citizens in zone 14 and use combination play to reach dangerous regions, but it also meant who could overload one side of the field quite easily and then watch. to create opportunities for the change to the other side and the true opener has shades of this initially we see a real overload on the left side and Cara how the open greish forces deep and wide Kaminga receives and now greish moves towards midfield to pressure him to him and Carvajal. is the free man, there is an overload in zone 14, which means that Real can afford to have runners, which creates space for Kinger to come in and have the shot perfectly prepared for the second game, but I want to know who you think it will move on to the next one. round, release it below to see the manager's

tactical

score.

Ancelotti's transition approach was well executed with some poor results letting him down, meaning he gets a seven while Pep gets a five as City looked wide open in transition, but what do you think? Leave them down. watch the latest video of the

classic

between Bayern and Arsenal