Pep Guardiola has guided Manchester City into the Champions League final after demolishing Real Madrid 4-0. But the secret to the scoreline was in how City adapted to Madrid's tactics in the Bernabeu last week...
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00:00 Hi there everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here and just really quickly for you we've got
00:07 some brand new never before seen exclusive footage of all four Man City goals from last
00:12 night.
00:13 Roll the tape please.
00:14 This is goal number one, goal number two, goal number three and oh what a finish goal
00:19 number four.
00:20 Now full disclosure I wasn't actually going to do a video on that game because I just
00:24 thought ah it's Man City doing Man City things, doesn't need a bad nerd to overcomplicate
00:28 it for anybody but I watched it back this morning because yeah that's my life and I
00:33 noticed something, something very interesting.
00:35 Basically Pep Guardiola is not just a footballing genius, he's also a footballing super villain
00:40 and I just think that's worth applauding.
00:42 Alright so let's really quickly take a journey through time and space, ah it's really scary
00:49 to the first leg.
00:51 Some of the best moments Real Madrid had came from one man, Eduardo Camavinga.
00:56 It was his penetrating drive down the left hand side that got Real Madrid their first
00:59 goal and he was just relentless in hounding City's players, not letting them play, getting
01:03 in their faces, winning the ball back, he was excellent.
01:06 But you may or may not be aware of this, he is not naturally a left back, he always played
01:10 as a central midfielder, that's what Real Madrid signed him to do and he's still sort
01:14 of learning his trade over there.
01:16 So what Pep Guardiola did was, and if I just may borrow a line from a movie, he took a
01:20 long hard look at him and he said "the left back role is strong with you, young Camavinga,
01:26 but you are not a defender yet".
01:28 And thus he took that natural enthusiasm he had for pressing the ball and getting involved
01:32 with play and used it to ruin his entire life.
01:36 So here is the first goal for you, as you can see that's a really, really, really good
01:39 actually defensive shape of a 4-2-3-1, everybody knows their jobs, they're nice and compact,
01:44 City can't play through that.
01:46 And there's our friend Eduardo Camavinga, perfectly positioned as the left back.
01:50 Now as you can see here, Rodri is about to spray the ball out to the right hand side
01:53 to a player who is currently embodying the key concept of City's approach.
01:57 Bernardo Silva is not even visible on this screen because he is standing on the touchline
02:02 to try and create as much width as he possibly can.
02:05 The ball goes out to him and Camavinga, as is his job as the left back, goes out to pressure
02:10 him.
02:11 I'm just going to pause the whole thing here, probably looks dreadful with this top because
02:14 I need to show you something very important for the rest of this video, okay?
02:18 Right?
02:19 This, this big bit here, this is called the half space.
02:23 Now it's quite a nebulous concept that it can change depending on the teams or just
02:27 the situations, but the easiest way to think about it, okay, is it is the horizontal lines
02:32 across a football pitch that you would neither class as central, nor would you class them
02:36 as wide, they're sort of the bits in the middle.
02:39 And they're very, very useful if you can get players into them because you're not so far
02:42 away from the goal that you can't really affect things, but you're also not so central that
02:45 you're likely to be congested.
02:46 You tend to be very dangerous and have a lot of options if you can get space in the half
02:51 space.
02:52 And what City wanted to do last night was to stay as wide as they possibly could to
02:55 see if they could create that space in the half space.
02:59 And if at any point they did, every single player who spotted it was running straight
03:03 into it.
03:04 So Camavinga has taken the base here, he's charged out, the rest of the defence hasn't
03:07 really gone with him.
03:08 We have a lot of room in the half space.
03:10 Jon Stones is the player who spots this, he makes the run, and this is where it all starts
03:14 to come together for City.
03:16 Stones isn't receiving it in a particularly dangerous area, he's got his back to goal,
03:19 he's not exactly a massive threat here, but he has forced Tony Kroos to track his run.
03:24 And I can already see here what was previously a defensive line of four players all exactly
03:28 where they wanted to be is now a defensive line of five players, with two of them not
03:32 really totally sure what they're supposed to be doing.
03:35 Kroos has tracked the run and because he's gone deeper than the defence, they are being
03:38 forced to move back to keep the line.
03:39 And Camavinga, realising that that's actually the space he's supposed to be defending, now
03:44 gets drawn on the ball.
03:45 Now we are still a number of seconds away from the key thing happening, but if you just
03:47 look at Bernardo Silva's body language here, you can already see he knows exactly what's
03:53 about to go down, he knows exactly what to do, he is moving into the space from which
03:57 he is about to score the goal.
03:59 Madrid forced Stones to go backwards, but now he's drawn three separate players towards
04:03 him and because they've gone so deep in doing so, the defenders are now on the edge of the
04:07 six-yard box.
04:08 Now Real Madrid need to reset in this situation, they need to get Camavinga back in the left
04:12 back spot, they need to get in a nice line and they need to push up out of their own
04:16 box and this is what's known as a transition.
04:18 There isn't an overload here or anything, Real Madrid have four players for City's four
04:22 attackers, but it is going to take them some time and some thought and some disruption
04:26 to get a solid shape back.
04:27 And City are banking on this.
04:29 Camavinga chases the ball down by pressuring Walker because instinctively as a midfielder
04:34 that's what he thinks he should do and when the ball comes across to Kevin De Bruyne,
04:37 Kroos and Modric, because they're almost certainly being told to look after De Bruyne in that
04:41 position, both get drawn towards him.
04:44 And nobody but nobody has remembered or thought about little Bernardo Silva, who is now standing
04:50 unmarked and onside in Real Madrid's half space within their own box.
04:56 Kevin De Bruyne does not need telling, twice plays him in with a brilliant through ball
05:00 and when he receives it, just look at the shape that City have manipulated Real Madrid
05:06 into.
05:07 Twelve seconds previously they were as perfectly organised as you could ever possibly hope
05:11 to be.
05:12 Just going to really quickly draw these lines on to illustrate and now they are like this.
05:16 And here are those same lines.
05:19 And it's a great finish, but if we just take a quick look at this aerial shot, you could
05:21 see he could very easily just roll it across to Gundogan for a tap in or if he was feeling
05:25 particularly fruity, could just loft it to the back post of Haaland to head in.
05:29 That's how good a chance it was that they made.
05:32 And all because Eduardo Camavinga's brain still doesn't quite know he's a left back
05:36 and instead thinks, I'm going to go get that ball.
05:38 And I could break the second goal down in exactly the same way, but I'm sure we've
05:41 all got things to do today.
05:43 City this time are holding as much width as they can on the left hand side.
05:46 Camavinga has, for reasons known only to him, pursued it all the way out to that side, leaving
05:50 this enormous gap in the, in the, in the half space.
05:54 Yep, that's it.
05:55 Tony Cruz, fair play to him, does trot over to make sure Kevin De Bruyne can't take
05:58 advantage of this.
05:59 But with Camavinga neither getting back into position to allow his other defenders to shut
06:02 the cross or just getting into the space to read the danger, allows Gundogan to burst
06:06 in.
06:07 And with that goal, and while you could argue he's slightly fortunate that it loops up
06:10 and onto the head of Bernardo Silva, if we just look at this shot here, it's not anything
06:14 to do with luck, really is it?
06:16 City have just manoeuvred them there.
06:18 And there you go, Man City 2, Real Madrid 0.
06:21 And just quickly once again, let's show the third and fourth goal.
06:24 Yep, and yep, they were never coming back from that.
06:27 So for all Pep Guardiola does occasionally get accused of overthinking these big games
06:31 and got a lot of praise for sticking with the same team and thus not overthinking these
06:35 things, you can see that he still does think about it to some degree.
06:39 And when he thinks about it, he's really good at it.
06:41 Camavinga's tenacity and desire to win the ball back was undoubtedly one of Real Madrid's
06:46 biggest strengths in the first leg.
06:48 And Guardiola somehow managed to turn that into their greatest weakness in the second
06:53 leg.
06:54 That is, you simply sometimes just have to hold your hands up and say, "F***".
06:59 But hey, of course, that's just my opinion.
07:01 So let us know what you make of it in the comments below.
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07:18 In the meantime though, thank you so much for watching.
07:19 I've been Adam Cleary, this is 442, and I don't know what the Turkish word is for "see
07:25 you soon" because we're going to Istanbul.
07:27 That's the gag.
07:28 So, bye.