Birds of a Feather

(continued from title).... get cooked and eaten together in the same way, but on different days... Across this season, Bilbao has always struck me as a Valencia without brains, but with much more talented attackers in Susaeta and Muniain. That aside, these are the two most similar teams in the league (apart from Real Madrid and Sevilla, coincidence I hate them both?...I think not..) and I'll get to some nice proof of that later on (from the wonderful whoscored website which is an intellectual masturbator's ultimate porn, leaving aside actual porn of course - but since I've used the word intellectual it has to be well structured in terms of plotline and philosophical dialogue). The post isn't to say two of my favorite sides play really similar football - something that should be a given for people who support teams for style of football hence my portfolio of Roma, Valencia, Villarreal, Barca, Zaragoza, Juve, and of course the holy mother may she rest in peace early-2000's Ajax. The post is to wonder why teams don't learn from the success or failure of their twin teams, especially teams with cerebral coaches like Bielsa - Atletico Madrid punking Bilbao 3-0 in the Europa finals with just about an identical performance to their 4-2 and 1-0 punking of Valencia in the semis (and I guess philosophically from the Barca-Chelsea but that's only to bring up Barca in this post to catch some google search hits - since gameplay wise there isn't really similarity to that game or to Barca in general).  

Valencia and Bilbao have almost identically high % of open play goals, and low % of fast breaks and set pieces. Leaving RM/Barca aside, Val/Bilbao both have the highest avg possession,and the highest pass completion %. They have scarily identical shot zones : 8% in the 6 yard box (highest in the league) and only 38% outside the box (2nd lowest only to who else but Barca). They play an identical lone striker 4-3-3 with 1 side of the field marshalled by a more-defensive wingback behind the more talented winger (Bruno/Pablo and Aurtenetxe/Muniain) while the other side depends on hugely versatile players who play excellently off each other (Alba/Mathieu and Iraola/Susaeta). And they lost to Atletico in identical fashion. Valencia's 4-2 loss was because of a static right flank (R.Costa is really a center back, and Feghouli is a bald loser) and a static under manned MF (Topal in his new man-marking avatar, and Costa woefully out of form) - all the right changes for the 2nd leg in a 3-man MF of evergreen awesomeness Albelda, my new favorite Sergio Canales, and neat and tidy Parejo - problems? R.Costa replaced the faster and positionally brilliant Victor Ruiz, while Barragan is too defensive to play against a bus-parking team. Lost 1-0 to tight, efficient and admittedly tactically superior Atletico. 

Thus came the Bilbao-Atletico game and Bilbao had the chance to look at the Valencia-Atletico mirror and realize it was their reflection, or they could think it was someone else. The previews made a big deal about Bielsa watching Atletico tapes and making his players watch tapes of who they'd be marking or playing around. He should have spent all that time watching Valencia play Atletico and making his players watch corresponding Valencia players. He should have seen R.Costa/Barragan get totally overrun by Arda Turan and Parejo get bossed by Gabi. They should have thrown Iturraspe back into a 3-man D to allow Iraola the freedom to get beyond Arda, while allowing Ander.H to drop back away from Gabi's attention instead of counting on him for drive and width. Valencia suffered from Albelda getting pulled away from Canales too often in attack, and getting pulled towards the wings when Turan/Adrian broke on the counter thus exposing the CB's to Falcao and Diego - further case for a 3-man D to watch for Atletico's fast breaks. The problem with watching Atletico's tapes is they play a much less compact game in Liga, case in point Malaga game last week. 

A lot was made of Amorebieta (who both the commentators insisted on calling "Amorebiate") having a bad game, which I think was unfair given he often had to cover for Aurtenetxe being out of position. Player of the game : Arda Turan. Most of Bilbao's moves come down the right wing (Just like Valencia's left wing) with Iraola and Susaeta (my fav. Bilbao player along with Javi) - they were just completely quiet with Arda's off the ball movement being incredible - consequently all Bilbao could muster was from Muniain down the left exchanging quickly with De Marcos and pulling Aurtenetxe into a more attacking position than I've ever seen him occupy. Gabi bossed Herrera just like he did Parejo (compared to Tiago geez what are they still doing with that moron), in what turned out to be a painful replay of the semi-final. Bilbao beat Atletico 3-0 in Liga, Valencia beat them 1-0, but neither Bilbao nor Valencia shed their naivete in thinking teams don't regress tactically in knockout fixtures so I guess they're identical in this too. Then again, Atletico were really good to watch before Simeone came in with his blood/guts/heart/courage/freedom speeches so major sighage this season on the result vs gameplay debates.

 P.S : The part about liking a certain gameplay and hence following many teams with similar styles - and for Arsenal fans claiming they are the Liga-ic team of EPL : Arsenal have the third most number of crosses/game in the EPL (next only to Lpool and ManU obviously), and the highest % of fast break goals in EPL (almost double that of the next highest), ironically they have the same % of fast break goals as the highest in Liga.... which would be? yep, Real Madrid and Sevilla. How awesome is whoscored.com!!