Barca MF has come a long way since Cocu, Xavi, Deco eras. Xavi Iniesta playing together in their first season revelled in the space between opposing sides' 2 banks of 4 (MF, DF) having to find their passes through the final 4. Now, teams facing them have so compacted their 2 lines that space only exists in front of and behind a sea of 8, meaning their through passes to say Messi/Alexis still leave one line of 4 to beat. The other option is of course break clean through beyond even the last 4, like Cesc, but that's obviously off the ball and never really with an intent to dictate play. At the cost of being just an annoying echo of the recent entropy article, Pep's main aim of a 3-man D and 4-man MF might be to leave one player free to do what Xavi/Iniesta could do before teams compressed their 2 lines of 4 - break through to penultimate layer and find a pass. Cuenca providing width on the right (although neither as much nor as effectively and often, as Alves whom - presumably - he replaced) and Pedro on the left, was the nicest thing to happen to Xavi and especially Iniesta who's too often been saddled with width burden this season. Dominated play, frequently found themselves with only a back 4 to beat, and found dangerous passes with consummate ease. Truly Messien performance from Iniesta this game. Contrast with Roma over in Italy who comprehensively beat Udinese playing possibly their most freakish formation this season - with Jose Angel being the only player in the back 4 playing his natural position. Main strength over the formation in their Lecce loss was Totti coming in behind Lamela and Osvaldo to completely overrun Udinese. Enrique still persists with Gago and Marquinho who despite being really sub par at CMF, have had their inadequacies masked by DeRossi's hybrid role of bringing the ball out of defense and starting moves.
Meanwhile, Valencia and Atletico play scarily identical formations in their respective matches and get identical scorelines, but opposite results. Valencia thump Rayo 4-1 (were awarded a ghost penalty, but then also had a perfectly legal goal disallowed, so net 4-1 anyway) while Atletico got thumped (though an unfair description) by the real Madrid. Che dropped all strikers and went with Jonas up front on paper, though Pablo and Alba were almost always feeding the ball into him and then rushing past him for the swift return. Atletico started with Falcao up but similarly, Arda and Adriano fed it into him and raced past, all in all a fascinating preview of what the Valencia Atletico Europa Semi might entail. On Atletico's expected implosion the past 2 months, it's almost like they play well once they forget what Simeone had told them to do, with the first 15-20 minutes of each half being horrendously disjointed and then the natural talent of players kicking in while Simeone's words echo out, to make for a strong 2nd half of each half. Not his biggest fan obviously. Also, not the biggest fan of Tim Stannard's article making Luis Perea out to be useless! But big fan of Juve's inevitable plodding towards the title, the same as ever formation, except maybe Pepe got pushed up much further, and Vucinic dropped little deeper, a stable as hell formation probably helped by their low injury stats, like this nice article points out.
Meanwhile, Valencia and Atletico play scarily identical formations in their respective matches and get identical scorelines, but opposite results. Valencia thump Rayo 4-1 (were awarded a ghost penalty, but then also had a perfectly legal goal disallowed, so net 4-1 anyway) while Atletico got thumped (though an unfair description) by the real Madrid. Che dropped all strikers and went with Jonas up front on paper, though Pablo and Alba were almost always feeding the ball into him and then rushing past him for the swift return. Atletico started with Falcao up but similarly, Arda and Adriano fed it into him and raced past, all in all a fascinating preview of what the Valencia Atletico Europa Semi might entail. On Atletico's expected implosion the past 2 months, it's almost like they play well once they forget what Simeone had told them to do, with the first 15-20 minutes of each half being horrendously disjointed and then the natural talent of players kicking in while Simeone's words echo out, to make for a strong 2nd half of each half. Not his biggest fan obviously. Also, not the biggest fan of Tim Stannard's article making Luis Perea out to be useless! But big fan of Juve's inevitable plodding towards the title, the same as ever formation, except maybe Pepe got pushed up much further, and Vucinic dropped little deeper, a stable as hell formation probably helped by their low injury stats, like this nice article points out.
No comments:
Post a Comment