TACTICAL REVIEW: REAL MADRID 0-1 BARCELONA(ENGLISH VERSION)

A brief analysis of the El Clasico in Copa del Rey, which saw a heavily injury ridden Barcelona side came out on top against their biggest rivals after a heroic and pragmatic performance. 

After a spectacular 5-2 victory at Anfield, it took Real Madrid a late header from the young Alvaro Rodriguez to keep one point at home in the Madrid derby. In their third consecutive big game, Los Blancos lined up in the usual 433, with Courtois between the posts, a back 4 of Nacho, Militao, Rudiger and Carvajal. Camvinga got his second El Clasico start alongside Toni Kroos and Luka Modric, while Valverde formed an attacking trio together with Benzema and Vinicius.

On the other side, Barcelona stepped into the El Clasico after a tragic week. They were eliminated from the Europa League for the second time in a row by English side Manchester United, before witnessing yet another upset in La Liga against Almeria. Another negative result in the Clasico may very well demoralize Xavi’s team, and the team would have to play the big game without four of their best players this season, Lewandowski, Pedri, Dembele and Christensen.

Xavi lined his team up in a 433. Araujo, Kounde, Alonso and Balde formed a back 4 in front of Ter Stegen. Busquets, De Jong, Gavi and Kessie made the box midfield, while the other two places up front were Ferran Torres and Raphinha.

Real Madrid’s (surprisingly) well-structured press…

After the match, Carlo Ancelotti stated that this was Real Madrid’ best match in terms of pressing, and he was right. It wasn’t truly outstanding, yet it was way more compact and coherent than usual, at least sufficient to harass Barcelona’ build-up(partly thanks to the absence of Pedri, though).

In general, Real Madrid’ pressing structure consisted of Karim Benzema and Fede Valverde taking charge of the two center backs. Fede would press Alonso diagonally, with a view to leaving Alejandro Balde under his cover shadow. In midfield, Real Madrid came up with a loose and flexible 1v1 man marking: Kroos picked up Frenkie De Jong, Camavinga tracked Kessie, and Modric followed Busquets. 

On the left flank, Vini Jr positioned himself close to the left half-space, trying to close down passing lanes towards Frenkie De Jong. Araujo was allowed to receive fairly comfortably on this side, as he is not really an excellent ball progressor, whether via pass or carries. Most of Real Madrid’ traps are set on this side: whenever the ball is played to Araujo, Vini Jr would jump aggressively onto him, while Benzema moves to cut off the passing lane back to the center back and the midfielders tightly track their man. Raphinha rarely dropped deep to pick up the ball, as this will result in Barcelona running short of players up front.

Meanwhile, on the opposite flank, Carvajal pushed up high and engaged aggressively onto Balde, in order to completely lock down Barcelona’ right flank. Balde is an excellent ball carrier, that’s why Real Madrid attached way more importance on stopping play to proceed on his side.

Pressing alternative: if Frenkie looks to receive from the center backs, Real Madrid would shift to a space-oriented approach in the midfield, as they try to cut off all his nearby options. As Frenkie is not a good long range passer, Barcelona rarely selected this build-up routine.

However, it’s apparent that Ancelotti was fully aware of his team’ lack of collective coherence and synchronization, from which errors may arise. That explained why Real Madrid rarely pushed their press too high, but mostly stayed in a mid-press. As a result, Ter Stegen was allowed plenty of space to distribute with his feet. And thanks to his excellent ball playing ability, the amount of pressure that Barcelona had to receive was significantly reduced.

…yet Barcelona took the lead.

Real Madrid was arguably the superior team in the first 20 minutes due to their efforts in pressing, but it was Barcelona who opened the scoreline. 

A few minutes before the goal, it’s noticeable that Barcelona adjusted their build-up system, back to the famous “La Volpiana” with Busi stepping back to form a back 3 and Frenkie De Jong as the holding 6 in front of the defense. This set-up would limit De Jong a bit, yet unleashed Gavi and Kessie, got them more involved in the build-up phase, by acting as runners around Frenkie. Barcelona’ first back 3 would then outnumber Real Madrid’s first pressing line by 3v2, and at the same time, they were able to push Balde higher up to pin Carvajal back. It would be interesting to see how things turn out after this point, had it not been for a gift from Camavinga.

Under Kessie’ pressure, Camavinga misplaced a simple back pass and he was punished. As many has pointed out, this is a caveat in Camavinga’s game that needed to be eased out if he wants to establish himself as a tempo controller: even though Camavinga is capable of playing through under high pressure, he sometimes overcomplicates things for himself by dwelling on the ball for a little too long. A high volume passer needs to be extremely reliable with such basic passes, and this is clearly something Camavinga needs to work on in the future.

Low blocks, Ancelotti’s worst nightmare.

At the beginning of the match, Ancelotti's intent was to overload the right flank, with constant wide drift from Benzema, then quickly switch to the left side, in order to put Vinicius Jr in 1v1 situations. Some bright signs had been shown, but since Barcelona got the lead, things went south for Ancelotti’s team. 

After taking the lead, Barcelona retreated into a 451 low block, mainly defending deep for the remainder of the game.Xavi’ defending shape was compact enough to close down all the space between the lines, and at the same time, lock Vinicius up by maintaining numerical superiority on the right wing. Barcelona still put together a few counter attacking sequences, but in general, they showed no keen in retaining possession. Real Madrid, as usual, struggled to break down Barcelona’ deep block, due to the lack of clear patterns and principles. As had been pointed out by many, Madrid lacked a real threat on the right wing, thus unable to stretch their opponent on both sides to break down their compactness.

Real Madrid enjoyed 65% of possession that night, a rare sight in recent Clasicos, yet failed to fire even a single shot on target throughout the rest of the match. Carlo Ancelotti tried to add another offensive player by subbing in Rodrygo for Nacho, moving Camavinga to the left-back position, but that’s still not enough to turn things around, due to the absence of a systematic approach. After 8 additional minutes, an uninspiring Real Madrid side failed to find the leveller. The match ended with the visitor taking a one goal advantage into the second leg, which will be held at the Camp Nou a month later.