Why Man City Dominated Real Madrid, But Couldn't Win
Manchester City 1-1 Real Madrid on the night but it's an early Champions League exit for Pep Guardiola's side all the same. But why, despite playing well and creating some big chances against the Spanish giants, did City fail to win the game?
Adam Clery examines the game, finds how City were able to get on top, but also breaks down why they couldn't make it count.
Adam Clery examines the game, finds how City were able to get on top, but also breaks down why they couldn't make it count.
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00:00 (ding)
00:02 All right, so this was Manchester City,
00:03 and I think with the exception of the missing John Stones,
00:06 this isn't just their strongest 11,
00:08 but it is beat for beat the treble-winning team.
00:11 Now, the plan, as you are no doubt familiar with
00:13 by this point, when Man City set up this way,
00:15 is to bring one of the defenders forward from the back line
00:18 into the midfield to give us the three-box three.
00:22 They do this because so many teams invariably set up
00:24 in either a 4-3-3 or a 4-2-3-1,
00:26 so theoretically, that gives them four players
00:30 in an area where most teams only have three.
00:32 So this shape, combined with the fact that Edison
00:35 can just play as a regular center back if he wants,
00:37 meaning they outnumber you absolutely everywhere
00:40 when they're building up,
00:40 means you have to come to play Man City
00:42 with some kind of plan.
00:44 And Real Madrid's plan was this,
00:46 basically a 4-2-4 with all their attackers
00:49 in a flush line sitting between the defense
00:52 and the first line of City's midfield,
00:54 with a plan to force them wide.
00:57 You saw this loads before Madrid got that goal.
00:59 Like, the defenders, the goalkeeper,
01:01 they were allowed to have the ball in this area
01:03 and just sort of circulate it around,
01:05 and Madrid's players would sort of trot out to them
01:07 to close them down, but crucially,
01:09 these central two here would only do so
01:11 if they could leave their man in their what's known as,
01:15 I think I always call it shadow cover,
01:16 but someone in the last video told me it's cover shadow.
01:18 Like, you get the idea.
01:19 They block the pass,
01:20 even though they're not marking the man.
01:22 They were basically trying to get City
01:23 to go wide with it,
01:24 and then they jump far more aggressively
01:26 and try and cut off all the passing options back in field
01:29 at the same time to try and win it back.
01:30 But the thing is, you're never gonna keep City
01:32 in this part of the pitch for too long.
01:34 So their main part of the plan
01:35 was more central-er and more clever-er-er.
01:40 So, two little facts for you here, friends.
01:42 Fact number one, you can't really have serious aspirations
01:46 of winning a game of football
01:47 if your center forward's primary job
01:49 is just to be meat in the middle of the pitch.
01:51 But also, fact number two,
01:54 you're only ever really outnumbered if you wanna be.
01:57 Madrid's main plan for dealing with City's box midfield
02:00 was to just forget about Akangi.
02:04 Like, in a scenario with Rodri, De Bruyne,
02:06 and Bernardo Silva,
02:07 he's definitely the least dangerous on the ball.
02:10 He's probably the one you can most allow to have that space.
02:13 So they were quite happy to let him sort of roam free.
02:16 And if we show you his heat map from the game,
02:19 you can see that as a result of that,
02:20 he kept finding himself as the spare man
02:23 in the final third of the pitch.
02:24 So he was receiving the ball there absolutely loads.
02:27 Now this is obviously an enormous gamble,
02:29 because if he plays a blinder,
02:30 then you're gonna get absolutely hammered.
02:31 Like, relaxing the marking and relaxing the pressure
02:34 around a particular player so you can focus it elsewhere
02:37 is a very Ancelotti, no tactics, just vibes idea.
02:41 But if we show you his pass map at the same time,
02:43 yeah, he gets it a lot.
02:44 He's receiving it pretty much all the way
02:46 across that front line.
02:47 But how many of these passes are ending up in the box?
02:49 How many of them are incisive?
02:51 How many of them actually create chances?
02:53 Well, virtually none is the answer to that,
02:55 but City's best chance in that half did come about as A,
02:58 a result of this Ocangi situation,
03:00 but also B, the main thing they were trying to do
03:03 in the final third.
03:03 Like the three box three system is designed
03:06 to do two things primarily.
03:07 Like first of all, it gives you numbers
03:09 in the buildup phase, so you can play through a lot easier.
03:11 But also it's supposed to give you space
03:13 and numbers again in the final third.
03:16 City's wide players, and this is sometimes, by the way,
03:18 why we talk about whether or not this is a great fit
03:20 for Phil Foden, because when you're stuck out there
03:22 in this system, you are really stuck out there.
03:24 Their job is to hold as much of the width as possible
03:27 to try and like lure the defenders toward them.
03:30 Now, given that one or sometimes both of the center backs
03:32 will be concerned with Harland,
03:34 if you can drag a fullback out of position,
03:36 if you can bait them towards the touchline,
03:38 that in theory leaves you loads of room in both channels
03:41 for your three eights, as we call them,
03:44 to get on the ball or possibly even running behind.
03:47 And in that first half, City actually got in once or twice
03:49 by doing this exact thing.
03:50 Like Kevin De Bruyne was being man marked by Tony Kroos,
03:53 but all he had to do was slip his marker,
03:56 evade his attention for a couple of seconds,
03:58 and when Mendy was getting drawn out to Foden,
04:00 that space was there.
04:01 Now this is the buildup to that chance, right?
04:03 Foden has received the ball really wide,
04:04 he's drawn Mendy towards him,
04:06 and that is not one of the center backs,
04:08 that is Tony Kroos.
04:09 So the actual distance between Madrid's back four here
04:12 is enormous.
04:14 And of course, please note who is the unmarked player
04:16 in this scenario, Manuel Akanji.
04:19 So Foden rolls the ball into him,
04:20 and obviously that means Real Madrid now have to become
04:22 alive to the danger Akanji presents,
04:25 and the only player in attendance is Tony Kroos,
04:27 so he takes his attention off De Bruyne for a split second.
04:31 De Bruyne can now exploit that space
04:32 between Mendy and the defense.
04:34 Akanji plays him in really well,
04:36 and they should, with a slightly better delivery,
04:39 get a goal from this.
04:40 So I know that did happen before the Real Madrid goal,
04:42 but just an example of how City did seem to have
04:44 a really good handle on this,
04:45 and despite Madrid's good setup stopping them doing
04:49 exactly what they wanted to do,
04:50 they were still dominating and making chances.
04:52 But anyway, none of that matters, does it?
04:54 'Cause then Real Madrid managed to score a goal.
04:57 And I have seen Kyle Walker getting pelters for this,
05:00 for playing the lad onside,
05:02 but can we just back that up for a couple of seconds?
05:06 It's actually really good play by Madrid
05:09 exploiting Man City's press.
05:12 Yes, it is.
05:13 Now the danger that Tony Kroos presents on the ball
05:15 means that Kevin De Bruyne couldn't really jump off him
05:18 to press the center backs,
05:19 'cause if he found some space and he got on it,
05:20 then that's probably Madrid's most dangerous player
05:23 in this area on the ball completely free.
05:25 So he was tasked with this.
05:27 You don't really wanna jump Bernardo Silva either
05:29 for similar reasons,
05:30 so the job of joining in with the press of the defense,
05:33 and specifically the center backs, fell to Jack Grealish.
05:36 Now that's actually quite a good thing
05:38 from Man City's perspective,
05:39 because Danny Carvajal was playing very aggressively,
05:41 he was pushing really far up,
05:42 so by having Grealish press this area,
05:45 it means that they did win the ball back,
05:47 straight away Grealish will be in loads of space.
05:50 So it kind of, there's two good reasons to do that.
05:53 But what it does force them to do
05:54 is have Guardiola push all the way up this side
05:57 to then make sure that Carvajal can't get on the ball.
06:00 Just, yes, I know what you're thinking,
06:02 that is a center back playing as a full back
06:04 being asked to press another full back in his own half.
06:08 That's just Guardiola, that's what he does.
06:10 And would you believe it, this shape here,
06:12 with Man City's back four doing this,
06:14 presents a problem if you can get the ball into that area,
06:18 which they did.
06:19 It's played out to Carvajal
06:20 exactly the way Guardiola will have predicted.
06:23 He's not really got anything on,
06:24 you can put the pressure on him,
06:25 hey, maybe you can turn the ball over,
06:26 but no, he just humps it long into the center of the pitch,
06:30 and Jude Bellingham manages to take a touch,
06:32 so good, I have legitimately been
06:35 for a pregnancy test this morning.
06:37 It's a ball!
06:38 Now obviously, because Guardiola has pushed up
06:40 that much on the left-hand side,
06:42 Diaz has covered across,
06:43 and Rodri has sat in a little bit,
06:45 so City are actually pretty good here.
06:47 They've got an improvised back four,
06:49 so the space isn't too much of an issue.
06:51 That's the problem with improvising anything, my friends,
06:53 it can go slightly wrong.
06:54 Diaz's natural instinct,
06:56 when Bellingham receives the ball in the center of the pitch,
06:58 given that that's probably his man,
07:00 ought to go back into that area,
07:02 especially when he jinxed around Rodri.
07:04 So now, Man City have found themselves in the position
07:07 where this is their sort of improvised back four, not good,
07:10 and this is their actual back four.
07:13 Either way, that now gives Valverde
07:15 all this space to get into,
07:17 and Bellingham duly obliges him with a pass.
07:19 Now, okay, yes, Kyle Walker,
07:21 you are an experienced England international,
07:22 you're one of Man City's most important players.
07:25 You are looking along this line.
07:27 If you just stop, if you just hold your position,
07:30 this move is finished,
07:32 and Real Madrid never score from it.
07:34 But the reality is,
07:35 and this is why I'm gonna let Kyle Walker off with this,
07:36 he is in this side to stop any of Madrid's attackers,
07:40 whoever's over on the left,
07:41 from breaking into the space behind.
07:43 His job is to cover those runs.
07:46 So in his head,
07:47 he is constantly trying to give himself
07:49 an extra yard or two,
07:51 and it's that extra yard or two that plays him on side.
07:54 What I don't think you can let him off for
07:55 is his decision-making here,
07:57 because he's got everything under control.
07:59 He's blocking off the pass, they can't make a run.
08:01 All he's gotta do is just have a quick look over his shoulder
08:04 to see where his player is.
08:05 Instead, he gets drawn towards the near post
08:08 to stop a near post run that is never happening.
08:11 There's nobody there.
08:12 Nobody's gonna do that.
08:13 And as a result, he can't cut that pass out and the score.
08:16 Now this presented a pretty major problem to Man City,
08:18 because they were playing really well,
08:20 exploiting the areas of space that Real Madrid were leaving.
08:22 But now, Real Madrid had a goal to protect
08:25 and started leaving a lot less of that space.
08:28 Madrid just then went about as deep as a Jeff Buckley song
08:31 and as compact as corned beef,
08:32 more or less defended man for man
08:34 and stopped City really having too much of the ball
08:37 in the areas where they could hurt them.
08:38 And just to show you how much Man City struggled
08:41 to get the ball in the areas they wanted to have it, right?
08:44 On average, in the Premier League this season,
08:46 Man City have attempted about 16 or 17 crosses.
08:50 Last night, and oh boy,
08:52 they attempted 46 crosses from open play.
08:57 Madrid routinely forced them around the sides,
09:00 denied them any sort of penetration in the middle.
09:03 And City tried everything to play
09:05 through the middle of Madrid.
09:06 Like I'll just show you the average positions, right?
09:08 'Cause this is quite funny.
09:10 Bernardo Silva, Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden
09:12 are an amorphous blob in this right-hand channel,
09:16 because they kept interchanging positions
09:18 so much from the two eights and the wide right
09:21 to just try and find a bit of space
09:22 to evade a marker to make something happen.
09:24 But quite correctly, Pep Guardiola realized
09:27 that the incision was not gonna come
09:29 from these three players in this space.
09:31 It was from the one man who was holding his position,
09:34 Jack Grealish.
09:35 Or rather, Jack Grealish's area of the pitch
09:38 behind Dani Carvajal.
09:40 Because when everything is so tight
09:41 and everybody is defending so manfully,
09:43 the thing that will open this up,
09:45 better than any clever piece of play or interchange
09:48 or positional yada, yada, yada,
09:50 is just take a man on and beat him.
09:53 And do you know what?
09:53 As far as quite telling graphical representations go,
09:57 this one is definitely one.
10:00 Every single take on,
10:02 basically just running at another player with the ball,
10:04 trying to get around them through dribbling
10:06 that Manchester City attempted in that match.
10:09 And the concentration of them, I'm sure you'll agree,
10:12 is quite heavily weighted
10:14 into Dani Carvajal's area of the pitch.
10:16 Now, Jack Grealish, I thought, had a pretty good game.
10:19 He was stretching Madrid really well.
10:20 His work on the ball was good.
10:22 His work off the ball was good.
10:23 But it was when they subbed him,
10:24 when they binned him for Jeremy Doku,
10:27 literally a specialist in this sort of nonsense,
10:30 that's when City looked their most dangerous.
10:32 And case in point, this is that graph,
10:34 but just Jeremy Doku's contribution to it.
10:37 Now, I know there's a lot of reds in this,
10:39 but you've got to think,
10:40 like even if you're not getting past the play with the ball,
10:43 you're still forcing them back when you're doing that.
10:45 So the amount is almost as important here as the success.
10:48 And that is exactly how Man City got their equalizing goal,
10:51 because running at players, taking players on,
10:53 creates moments of chaos and uncertainty,
10:56 and they profited through one.
10:58 Doku receives the ball out wide,
10:59 and at this point, he's not even up against Kamavinga.
11:01 They've dropped Valverde all the way back
11:03 because of how worried they are about what he can do.
11:06 But regardless, he runs into the box,
11:08 and this creates that moment of uncertainty.
11:11 You can see Bellingham and Kamavinga
11:13 both pointing at De Bruyne,
11:15 expecting the other person to pick him up.
11:17 But in the few seconds that transpire after that,
11:20 he finds the space required
11:21 to be on the receiving end of the save,
11:24 and he tucks it away.
11:25 Now, if like me, you were watching this game,
11:26 you probably thought, well, that is it now.
11:28 City have got all the momentum.
11:29 They've got the goal.
11:30 They're finding a route through.
11:31 This should surely let them get the winner,
11:34 and everything I have talked to you about
11:36 so far in this video should have combined perfectly
11:41 for them to get a second goal.
11:43 It is the 80th minute, and you have seen every element
11:46 of what is about to happen already in this video.
11:48 Doku is wide.
11:50 That has drawn out the fullback
11:51 and created this enormous gap between him and the defender.
11:55 But not only that, the unmarked player in this scenario,
11:58 the one Madrid are choosing not to worry too much about,
12:01 is Manuel Ikanji.
12:03 And because he is deemed to not be the big priority,
12:06 he's the one who can exploit this gap
12:08 between the fullback and the center back,
12:09 and Doku finds him with it.
12:11 He gets to the byline, he cuts it back,
12:13 and lo and behold, which Manchester City attacker
12:16 has been able to slip off the back of his marker
12:18 to find a little bit of room?
12:21 Kevin De Bruyne.
12:22 All he's gotta do is bury this chance,
12:24 and you have a living, breathing,
12:27 top-level Pep Guardiola masterclass
12:30 that he can show the world on YouTube,
12:32 but he doesn't.
12:35 He absolutely beams it over the bar.
12:38 But then it goes to penalties.
12:40 And if you wanna know the real reason
12:42 why Man City lost this game, right,
12:44 it's because they just didn't learn.
12:46 Wind the clock back what feels like a million years
12:50 to the Community Shield final.
12:51 Manchester City are playing Arsenal.
12:53 It goes to penalties.
12:54 They lose that one as well.
12:55 And Muggins here does a video looking at the amount
12:59 of time City were giving themselves
13:01 between the whistle being blown and the ball being kicked.
13:04 The science, people are obviously still doing the science
13:06 behind this, but the working theory
13:08 is that the longer you give yourself
13:10 before striking the ball,
13:11 the more you can get your breathing right,
13:14 the more you can lower your heart rate,
13:16 the better chance you give yourself
13:19 of scoring that penalty.
13:20 Arsenal just did it against Porto
13:22 in the Champions League as well.
13:23 They took way, way longer on average per kick,
13:26 and they were much better at doing it.
13:27 Obviously, it guarantees you absolutely nothing.
13:30 Nothing guarantees you anything in this sport.
13:32 That's the beauty of it.
13:33 But margins, margins matter.
13:35 The little things you can do to give yourself
13:37 the best possible chance of doing well,
13:40 and Man City did not do that.
13:42 They rushed two of their penalties,
13:45 and lo and behold, they missed those two penalties.
13:48 Like everybody who saw that Bernardo Silva penalty
13:50 was like, "What on earth?
13:51 What on earth is he doing with that?"
13:53 But remember, they couldn't get the ball out of the crowd,
13:55 and he sort of like squabbled to get it back.
13:58 Then he just put it down, hit the thing,
14:00 and lo and behold, it was just so...
14:02 I've never seen a penalty like it.
14:04 Like it wasn't down the middle with any finesse or power.
14:07 It was just like he was passing the ball to the goalkeeper.
14:10 And that was the difference.
14:11 Man City were the better side by an absolute mile,
14:15 but they missed the great chance
14:16 they managed to carve out for themselves,
14:18 and then they squandered the opportunity
14:20 they had with penalties.
14:22 And that's the way it goes, I'm afraid.
14:24 If it's any consolation to you,
14:26 a probable Manchester City fan,
14:27 I do now think that you will go on to,
14:30 how can I phrase this, dry bum the league,
14:32 but still, it's never nice to get eliminated
14:34 from such a big competition.
14:36 Now, if you have enjoyed this video,
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14:52 I love you too, but in a different way.
14:54 New issue of the magazine out now,
14:56 it's the Invincibles issue,
14:57 featuring an incredible cover story
14:59 about Arsene Wenger's side that never, ever lost a game
15:02 in the Premier League that season,
15:03 and everybody likes as a result.
15:05 It's really good.
15:06 Can't believe I caught that like that.
15:07 Anyway, that's available from all good newsagents.
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15:16 in the description,
15:17 and I think that's everything,
15:19 which I now say at the end of every video,
15:20 "I think that's everything."
15:21 I should learn or write it down.
15:22 I should have it on notes, shouldn't I?
15:24 I'm rambling.
15:26 Yes.
15:27 Sorry, Man City.
15:28 Vamos, Madrid, and bye.
15:32 That was it.
15:33 That's the word I couldn't find, goodbye.