Anyone else notice this? Watch Dani Alves at 10 seconds, where exactly was he going…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzkRpcMjSjo
while ronaldo is a great player, i dont he is the second best. after last night i firmly believe that barca have the three best players in the world.(messi, xavi and iniesta). even david villa could stake a claim for being the fourth.(2 goals and one assist last night. plus being joint top scorer at wc. his record at both club and international level is also sensational)
Another good read from zonalmarking.net:
Barcelona 5-0 Real Madrid: historic Barca win
November 30, 2010
The starting line-ups
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/7857/barcavrealteams.jpg
Barcelona produced a truly legendary performance to go top of the table.
Pep Guardiola deviated little from his favoured XI so far this season – the closest thing to a surprise was at left-back, where Eric Abidal played ahead of Maxwell. Lionel Messi started in the centre, with David Villa on the left.
Jose Mourinho did not change his 4-2-3-1, playing Mesut Ozil despite reports the German would be sacrificed for another ball-winner in midfield. Gonzalo Higuain was not fit enough to start, so Karim Benzema played alone upfront.
First things first – this wasn’t an inherently ‘tactical’ victory. Barcelona won primarily because of the cohesion and quality of the interplay in midfield. Their passing patterns in the centre of the pitch are the result of years of experience playing together, something Real couldn’t hope to match.
Nevertheless, there were various interesting tactical points from the game that may not have decided the outcome, but certainly contributed to Barcelona’s rout.
Real wingers
Mourinho started the game with his wingers on the opposite flanks to usual – Ronaldo out on the right and Angel di Maria on the left, presumably to work around the problem of Real defending against Dani Alves, as Di Maria is the better defensive player. Whilst Mourinho is generally a reactionary manager anyway, in a sense Guardiola had won the first battle of the match without a ball being kicked, since Mourinho felt the need to play his most dangerous player somewhere other than the position where he had been turning in incredible performances so far this campaign.
Ronaldo is not alien to the right wing, of course – it is the position where he established himself at Manchester United. However, Mourinho is clearly a fan of stability – he’s changed his starting XI as little as possible so far this season, and considering how well Ozil (who plays left-of-centre) links up with Ronaldo, breaking up that combination was a surprise, and was (a small) part of the reason why Ozil wasn’t very effective in this game. There’s also an argument that Ronaldo playing high up the pitch on the right indirectly opened up space on the flank for Iniesta, who often moved to Barca’s left.
Barcelona centre-backs
The second point of note here is how often Barcelona’s centre-backs switched. Generally, Gerard Pique plays on the right of the pairing and Carles Puyol plays on the left. However, the two frequently swapped sides during the game, seemingly according to which side of the pitch Ronaldo was on. Puyol always appeared to be on the side closest to Ronaldo, ready to double up against him – as if Guardiola didn’t completely trust Pique, who has a tendency to dive into tackles.
Eventually Ronaldo moved back over the left-hand side, but this was after Barcelona had already gone 1-0 up.
Barcelona also occasionally used a tactic they had showcased most obviously against Sevilla, where Daniel Alves moved high up the pitch and overloaded that side, whilst left-back Eric Abidal remained more conservative and formed a back three with Pique moving out to the right. This kept 3 v 2 against Benzema and Ronaldo.
Barca lead
The first goal was slightly unfortunate from Real’s point of view, but the concession of an early goal was a disaster for Mourinho’s gameplan, which involved Real’s defensive line sitting relatively deep on the edge of the penalty box. Even then, they were vulnerable to balls being threaded through the defence for midfield runners, because they were getting outplayed in the centre of midfield and one of Barcelona’s midfielders generally had time on the ball to slide it through.
The goal – or, you could argue, the second goal, which arrived on 18 minutes – meant Real could no longer afford to simply defend. They had to come out and play (or at least try to) which meant they were always going to be more susceptible to the pace of Barcelona’s attackers as the space behind the defence increased.
Midfield battle
Ozil’s defensive task was to pick up Xavi, but Xavi simply moved higher up the pitch where Ozil wasn’t comfortable tracking him – that movement was part of the reason why Xavi found himself in an uncharacteristic centre-forward position for the first goal. Xavi was able to leave the centre midfield area to Busquets, who kept things simple and distributed the ball forward excellently.
His World Cup-winning midfield partner Xabi Alonso looked much less assured, and Messi’s drifts towards him presented Alonso with a dilemma about whether to drop goalside and give Barca free run in midfield, or to let him go free and force one of the centre-backs out. It was generally the latter and Ricardo Carvalho put in possibly the worst performance of his career, stepping out of the defence and further exposing Real’s defence.
The pattern was so simple – ball forward to Messi in a deep position, he would then jink past the first challenge and knock the ball through the defence for Villa – or leave that part of the job to Xavi or Iniesta. Villa was constantly flagged offside in the first half, but eventually timed his runs much better and scored two goals in the second half. Real’s offside trap was astonishingly bad to start with and got worse as the game went on, though an equal portion of blame should be attached to the midfield for the lack of pressure upon the Barcelona player playing the pass.
Mourinho error
Sometimes you simply cannot stop Messi. How could Real have done it? Well, they could have used another holding player, and the introduction of Lassana Diarra for Ozil at half-time was nothing more or less than the obvious – an admission Mourinho got his starting line-up wrong. Against truly top-class opposition, especially a team playing a player ‘in the hole’ (as Messi often was, despite nominally playing as a forward), Alonso as the deepest midfield doesn’t work – he is neither particularly mobile nor a good tackler, and needs an enforcer alongside him. The Champions League final of 2005 showed that particularly well.
Diarra’s introduction did little to hold back the tide, of course, as Real moved to a 4-3-3 system. (Even that seemed slightly strange – the three forwards played very high up the pitch, maybe with the intention to use their pace in behind Barcelona’s high backline, but Real found it impossible to get the ball to them. Ronaldo was a threat in the first half, and invisible in the second.) But this was when Real were forced to play higher up the pitch, and after Barca had got themselves into a commanding position. Playing Diarra as a scrapper may have had more of an effect from the start of the game when Real could defend deeper.
Finally, Barca pressed very well. In the first half it was, by their standards, subdued on the pressing front – they seemed reasonably happy for Real’s centre-backs to have time on the ball, and instead worked on making it difficult for them to play the ball forward into the midfield. The literal point on the pitch from where Barca started to press may not have changed as the game went on, but as Real’s defence played higher, this naturally meant their centre-backs were suddenly getting shut down as soon as they got the ball – another (convoluted) reason why playing with a deep defence against Barcelona is preferable.
Conclusion
It’s doubtful any set of tactics would have resulted in Barcelona not winning this game, but Mourinho clearly made a mistake in his team selection. On the other hand, Barcelona adapted their shape slightly to suit the game (Abidal playing was the right call, the way the centre-backs swapped positions made them more defensively secure against Ronaldo) but didn’t compromise their attacking ability.
Still, if Mourinho does one thing well, it is learning lessons from defeats. He has never been on the end of a defeat like this, but one year and five days ago, his Inter side were completely outplayed by Barcelona at the Nou Camp, losing 2-0 and getting passed off the pitch in a manner similar to tonight. By the time the two sides contested the semi-final in late April, however, Mourinho had worked out how to beat Barcelona, and Inter won the tie.
The return fixture is on April 17 at the Bernabeu, and so Mourinho has a similar amount of time to work out how to turn this one around.
calm down- barca were found out vs the italians last season & cheated their way through against a chelsa team the year before
- let them win something before you start blowing them
TASE, get ta fuck, there is nobody in the world better than them when they play like last night. They fucked up in San Siro, but they are still the best team.
Simply sensational. 17-2 against Madrid in Pep’s 5 games, thats stunning. 17-2 against the next best team in your league!
Insightful stuff alright. Hadn’t noticed the Barca centre backs swapping like that.
Some interesting points on Xabi Alonso. I recall KIB Man assuring everyone how athletic Xabi Alonso is during the summer. He didn’t look it last night and not for the first time.
He’s a bit of an enigma for me anyway (Alonso that is). He had one very mediocre season at Liverpool and contributed very well in the rest of his time there but had matches when games completely passed him by. He was on screen an awful lot last night just standing still in front of his back four as Barca ran and passed it around him. He was clearly frustrated at not seeing enough of the ball because he’s obviously far better with it than without it. But you’d expect a player as talented as he is to be a bit more imposing from that sort of pivotal position. Not necessarily physically but just in terms of dictating play when Madrid have it (volante style) and I don’t think he’s as good at screening his defence as the likes of Busquets is. I’m not dismissing him as a player but he plays in a fairly influential position (moreso than Ozil for example) and doesn’t always live up to the associated responsibility.
A certain Astro team from around these parts would be disappointed with that sort of aggregate record against anyone in their league.
according to shan man united are nailed on for the next two champions league titles
I believe he also dismissed Busquets as a nothing player as well
haven’t seen Xavi get that so far forward so often before…he could have had a hat trick…mourinho definitely didn’t expect that…
poor carvalho has too much on the clock to be covering for the other 3 defenders…pedro is muck and not a centre half…sergio ramos
is reckless…always was…he’s not a right back…he’d be better off being stuck kin beside carvalho and trying to learn from him…marcello is
good going forward but not able to defend…
nah you believe wrong it was pedro that I was on about. wouldnt think busquets is a world beater or anything like it though. alonso easily outshone him in the world cup and is a far superior player in my eyes.
harsh enough to pick out alonso, ozil, de maria and khedira were lost also. It was a 5-0 defeat, all of them played shit. Alonso is a class player and will prove it again.
have to agree…busquets is a one trick pony who has grown into his disciplined role…fair play to him but hardly makes him a greta player
Alonso tries to do abit of that and also tries to create as well…he has a lot more in the locker than Busqets…
I’m picking out Alonso because:
a) he’s far more experienced and established than the others
B) he plays in a more influential role than Ozil and Di Maria anyway.
I don’t think any of them played well but Alonso was possibly the most disappointing, given his ability, his experience and the expectations and responsibilities on older players in a young team.
I’ll stand up for KIB (well Alonso really) here, personally felt he was trying hard but was already in a 3(4 at times when Messi dropped deep) against 2 situation, and even his partner Khedira was totally overwhelmed by the whole thing and either gave up and was utter engulfed by the whole occasion. Dismissing Busquets is idiotic stuff though, another sign that KIB doesn’t see the value of some players roles.
I don’t think he is as good as Busquets either for that role, but then again i don’t think that role suits him, or that he really likes it. Busquests is starting to get some more plaudits these days, but i actually think he is improving alot as well. His touch and passing and general awareness has improved an awful lot since even last season.
Busquets was outstanding for the most part last year for Barca and I am a big fan of his, he was statistically the best long range passer(passes over 25 metres) in Spain last season and is a very underrated player
I believe KIB Man didn’t criticise Busquets so not sure why that’s become fact all of a sudden.
Agreed with some of what you’re saying Kev but don’t follow some of it. He was certainly a victim of the system and of how Barca played around him but that’s where I’d expect a bit more leadership and responsibility from a senior midfielder. If Ki played like that for Celtic I’d be reasonably scathing of him, because I think there’s an onus on central midfielders to get involved. It’s one of the reasons I’ve so little time for Carrick.
Circumstances didn’t help Alonso but a player of his experience should be doing better than that. I thought his performance was typified by his late challenge on Busquets in the second half when he clipped him well after the ball had gone. It wasn’t so much that he got there late, it was more that he ran 15 yards to do it because he was so frustrated at how Busquets never went near him and he couldn’t get near Xavi, Iniesta or Messi.
busquts has improved alot (his skill anyway) but anyone would improve in that team. he is also still only 22.
Fair enough, i’ll accept your argument that he should be a leader etc.
Obviously i’m speculating, but i get the feeling Mourhino surprised even his own lads with the selection and the boldness of it, and it threw them all. Now i know they are pro’s and all that and i’m sure it was discussed, but for an undefeated team they looked completely bamboozled.
Puke - I’m pleasently surprised by that stat. Love any player that can pass a good 25 yarder.
But anyway, Xavi…for fuck sake, is it even allowed by FIFA to play that well? Surely its against some fair play ruling?
Admins - dungeon post above. Do the necessary
Mourihno will have ample opportunities to exact revenge in the coming weeks, starting on Saturday. La Liga is gone but I think they’ll do Barca en route to winning the Champions league.