How Spain's Lamine Yamal Just Destroyed France
Spain are through to the final of Euro2024 after coming from behind to beat early-tournament favourites France. Stealing all the headlines with his incredible equaliser; Lamine Yamal. But Adam Clery explains this wasn't just a great goal, but actually a great all-round performance that helped restrict the French as much as it enabled The Spanish.
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00:00Hola everybody, Hacia tiempo que no te via, Adam Cleary from 442 here and we now know
00:09one of the finalists for Euro 2024, it's going to be Spain.
00:14They have just this second defeat to France in a thrilling semi-final, if you have clicked
00:18on this video because you're expecting to see an in-depth tactical breakdown of that
00:22game then you are going to get that, but mostly we're just going to be talking about one man.
00:29Señoras y señoras, la miña mal.
00:36Okay so I know I normally set up when it's a game with both of the teams here, this is
00:40Spain and this is big amorphous blah blah, but I've just started with the France XI because
00:45I'm going to show you how they were set up and what they changed and how Spain played
00:49into that.
00:50First off, before we start, yes I know I'm wearing a dressing gown here, that's kind
00:54of like unprofessional, but I've been living in this studio for what feels like forever
00:58now, I've run out of clothes, I've got nothing left, it's called dedication so let's just
01:04push past that.
01:05So Spain had to make a number of changes for injuries and suspensions, but the only change
01:09France made was bringing in Dembele for Antoine Griezmann, did I just say Greensman there?
01:15Anyway, the idea being that because Dembele is a far better natural wide player he'd stretch
01:19Spain a lot more and because they're so good through the centre of the pitch with Rodri,
01:23there's no point having Griezmann occupy this area, you kind of want to try and get him
01:27behind.
01:28In fact, that whole idea of stretching Spain, it was kind of France's main plan when they
01:33were attacking, I'll just put Spain's defenders on here, and they're the entirely new right
01:39side of their back four, Jesus Navas, who's older than me, he came in for Carvajal and
01:44Nacho was here as well.
01:45And France were trying to do one of two things to Spain when they were attacking.
01:51First off, I'm going to show you the goalkeeper's pass map for France, so obviously a bit of
01:54a weird thing to show you in an attacking sense, but just look how much more of it is
01:59weighted out to the left-hand side, especially the shorter passes, he's always trying to
02:03build up or start the build-up on this side.
02:06Then the first half, France had quite a lot of joy with this because the objective was
02:10to build up on this left-hand side, invite Spain's press out, and the knock-on effect
02:15would then be that the whole Spanish defence, one way or another, would move across to this
02:20left-hand side.
02:21All of Spain's players would congregate more on this side of the pitch.
02:24Then, when they get the ball into the middle third, the objective is to switch it as quickly
02:29as possible, because all of a sudden, you've still got Kylian Mbappe holding this width
02:33here, and now Navas has to get out to him and is completely isolated.
02:38There were warning signs very early on for Spain that this was going to be very effective
02:42for France getting in, like Jesus Navas gets a yellow card quite early on because he's
02:46pulled so far out of position, and even the goal, even though it's not from Mbappe and
02:50doesn't come from that side of the pitch, comes from that side of the pitch.
02:54France have the ball on the right-hand side of the pitch, they've dragged all the Spanish
02:57players out to this side, and then they get their head up and they find a long, direct
03:01pass into Mbappe, who has now totally isolated Navas.
03:05Navas, understandably, was terrified about what Mbappe might do to him.
03:09In fact, a minute before this, Mbappe gets in behind, but he only gets in behind because
03:14Navas is trying to give himself so many yards of a head start, he creates this sort of defensive
03:21line.
03:22It was weird that, because in commentary they were praising him for matching the run, but
03:24if he just holds the line, that chance never happens.
03:28I'm not digging him out, I'd be terrified of playing Mbappe, and I've got two years
03:33on Navas.
03:34But anyway, understandably, because he does not want to get done, Navas kind of sort of
03:37sits off him a couple of yards, which he can't do, because that then lets somebody put a
03:41cross in.
03:42Which brings us, very neatly and very nicely, to part two of what France constantly were
03:47trying to do in this game, and that was cross the ball into the box, specifically into this
03:53area here, let's move my phone, where Marco Correa was guarding.
03:56Now we talked about this in the Germany game, by the way, that it took Germany ages to figure
04:01out that one of their best routes to goal was going to be these deep crosses into that
04:04sort of Spanish left-back area, because for all of Marco Correa's positive traits, for
04:08all he's really come along a lot in the last six months of the season, I may have called
04:13it the Cucaraissance in the magazine, sorry about that, he still is not good in the air,
04:18you can still beat him to an aerial ball.
04:21And I actually don't think necessarily this goal is his fault, because it's clear that
04:25Colomboani pulled off the back of the centre-back, but Correa nonetheless is in that area, and
04:30if you had a left-back who was a bit better in the air, you'd maybe challenge him a bit
04:34more.
04:35What is frankly loco about the rest of this game is that within the first seven minutes,
04:40you can see that France have got a really effective two ways to goal.
04:44Cougaray is not going to be able to defend that far post area, and not only have you
04:47got a wide threat who'll come in late, but you've got a proper centre-forward there instead
04:51of Antoine Griezmann, and also Mbappe appears to have Jesus Navas on fritz.
04:56And yet, across the remaining 83-plus stoppages minutes of this match, you almost never saw
05:03these two things work again.
05:07Now there are two reasons for that, right?
05:09The first off is that just like in the Germany game, Spain adapted really well to what was
05:14going on, both in terms of the decisions their players were making on the pitch individually,
05:18and the kind of substitutions that were coming from the bench.
05:21They adapted really well, but the other reason, the main reason, the reason we're here to
05:25talk about is Yamal, a footballer who is less old than the Simpsons movie.
05:33Now, yes, obviously this performance is going to be remembered because of that goal he scored.
05:38I don't know what the Spanish is for chef's kiss, but absolutely that, yes.
05:42But the thing is, it was so much more than just that finish.
05:46Now from a defensive perspective, one thing the French actually did really, really well
05:51was they shut off all the early passes into Rodri, and they stopped him hitting any kind
05:56of line-breaking ball into the front four players.
05:59Again, this is something else we've talked about over the course of the tournament, something
06:02that's really, really important to the Spain side is getting Rodri the ball in the right
06:06sort of area, then allowing him to split the lines, to play it through the midfield, to
06:11play it through the defence, possibly, because he's got that in his locker.
06:14And just like in the Germany game, France did a really good job of marking him out of
06:18the match.
06:19In fact, just to show you how good they were at doing this, I'll show you Rodri's pass
06:22map from the match, right?
06:23Yeah, he gets on the ball everywhere, but one, that's a very low number of passes by
06:28his standards.
06:29And if you can just sort of like squint and look in, right, so few of the passes from
06:34the middle of the pitch or into the final third are actually forwards passes.
06:39When he is getting it in those important areas, he is mostly having to go sideways or backwards.
06:44In fact, other than, and forgive me, I can't physically see this when I'm doing it, this
06:48one around here somewhere, which is in the 90th minute of the match, I don't think he
06:52actually passes it forward into the final third once.
06:56But anyway, the reason I mention all this is because as good as Spain have been at attacking
07:01in this tournament, when you take the legs away from them in the shape of Rodri, they
07:05become very reliant on the individual battle winning ability of both Williams and Yamal.
07:11But again, to give France their due, they had a pretty sensible plan for this, right?
07:15Whenever either of the wide players were facing up one of their fullbacks, instead of expecting
07:20either Mbappe or Dembele to get all the way back to provide like a double up defensively,
07:26it was actually the number eights who were dropping off into those little pockets to
07:30sort of stop the fullbacks getting isolated.
07:33The thing is, this actually worked really well across the course of the game.
07:36Like we've highlighted in a few videos that one of Spain's major weapons in this tournament
07:41so far has been their ability to complete take-ons, to dribble past players.
07:45In fact, the numbers are crazy for this.
07:47They've been doing like 17 or 18 per game in the tournament up until tonight.
07:52And yet here, France limited them to five.
07:56But that, my friends, is why this video is especially about Lemine and Yamal, because
08:00as we've seen, France have got good routes to goal.
08:03They've just gone and got a goal through utilising both of them.
08:06They've taken Rodri out of the equation.
08:08They're restricting his ability to build Spain through the thirds, and they've even stopped
08:12Williams and Yamal from doing individual bits of brilliance, right?
08:17Going into the eighth minute of that game after the French goal, you thought, they've
08:21probably got a really good chance here.
08:23But then, out of absolutely nowhere, Yamal does something in his 16-year-old brain that
08:28is genuinely way cleverer than I am going to make it sound, right?
08:32He reasons that if when he goes up against the full-back, the number eight has to come
08:36across to double up on him, will that work the same the other way round?
08:41And you can see here, in the build-up to the goal, what he has done is he has vacated the
08:44position out on the right-hand side, and he's just gone and matched himself up.
08:49Alvaro Morata, who I thought had a great game off the ball tonight, if such a thing even
08:54exists, goes out into that right-hand space, and we see that in fact, Hernandez's instructions
08:58are not just follow Yamal everywhere, they are mark that space, so he goes with him.
09:03That leaves Yamal one-on-one with Rabiot, and he could run through him, he could run
09:08around him, but he just believes in his ability enough to stick that in the top, top, top bins.
09:16And the thing is, it might just look like it's some kind of wonder strike, but to get
09:19in that position to get the shot away shows how good his understanding of space and movement
09:24on the football pitch is, and that's actually how they get the second goal with Dani Olmo as well.
09:28Knowing that somebody somewhere has to go with him, he doesn't just drop into the centre,
09:32he actually drops really, really deep, beyond the line they'd normally expect to find him in,
09:37so when he receives the ball, he's in a yawning chasm of space.
09:42What happens next is what's known as a rotation in football. Very trendy term at the minute,
09:47everybody seems to be using it, this is about as good an example of it as you could hope to see,
09:51because Yamal has moved off the right-hand side into the centre in a more deep position,
09:56Dani Olmo now wants to receive this ball, but instead of just staying where he is,
10:01he then goes out to that right-hand side, because Yamal has pulled a player away.
10:06It is a small, sort of subtle thing here, but it is really, really clever,
10:10because Rabiot is specifically stopping that ball going into Olmo,
10:13he's marking him without marking him, and he knows he's there,
10:17but because Yamal basically gets in his eyeline and draws his attention,
10:21Olmo then makes his move to the right-hand side into this little bit of space, and he can be found.
10:26And then to complete the rotation, because all the focus is now on Olmo in this central area,
10:31fronts have gone very narrow, you can see Hernandez is occupied with looking at him,
10:35that allows Navas to get down all this space in the right-hand side,
10:39and that's who they find.
10:40If you think about it this way, right, Yamal, who should have been going in behind,
10:43has dropped deep, and Olmo should have been deep,
10:45is pushed up against the centre-forward, and because they've done that,
10:48Navas, now he's the one that can get in behind, like, they have all rotated.
10:53And then, of course, the cross isn't great, but it falls to Olmo,
10:56and he's just so individually good, he sends Tushomeni to Le Chops with this touch,
11:03buries it in the back of the net via Jules Koundé's foot,
11:06and just like the Yamal goal, it's something where if you just look at the very end of it,
11:10you think, oh, that's a brilliant individual bit of skill,
11:13but there's brilliant understanding of movement,
11:15there's something really complex and clever that happens to allow that to happen.
11:19But, but, but, but, but, but, it's all well and good getting 2-1 up,
11:24but France had routes to goal, right?
11:27They should have still got in, they should have still got chances,
11:30Yamal and Navas, they're pushing all the way up,
11:32that should have left loads of space for Mbappe to do stuff,
11:35so why did you not really see Mbappe for the entire rest of that game?
11:39Well, again, the answer, hope you're sitting down for this, is Yamal.
11:43This is Spain's average position map across the 90 minutes,
11:47and it should be glaringly obvious just what a shift and what a performance this is from Yamal,
11:53because you've got Nico Williams all the way up here,
11:55doing Nico Williams things, forcing the defender back, being an attacking threat,
11:59but for some reason, Yamal is so much deeper, he's practically on top of Jesus Navas.
12:05And that's because if we overlay his heat map to go along with that,
12:08you will see that for every single thing he was doing on the edge of the box,
12:11like scoring wonder goals, he was also covering back over,
12:16helping his full-back, whether that was Nacho or Jesus Navas,
12:20being a defensive option as well as an attacking one.
12:24The kid is 16 years old, and nobody on this pitch in that match
12:29won more ground duels than he did.
12:32Like, France took away his ability to dribble around,
12:35they blocked off his favourite part of the pitch,
12:37and instead, he was like, okay, well, I'll just scrap you for it then.
12:41He was joint top of that stat, right, with Koundé and Rabiot,
12:46two absolute dog bastards who were partially on this pitch to win ground duels, right?
12:52Yamal, who was mostly up against Mbappe for them, did exactly the same.
12:56And it sounds like such a small thing,
12:58like right-sided attacker just covers back and helps his full-back,
13:02but this one individual thing was more or less singularly responsible
13:05for snuffing out most of France's attacking threat.
13:08Like, this is all of France's successful and unsuccessful crosses
13:13across the 90 minutes, right?
13:14And one thing you'll notice is that almost all of the successful ones
13:17are from this left-hand side to this deep right area.
13:21So crossing into Kukere's zone from the opposite flank.
13:25But also, what you'll notice is there are far fewer of those crosses
13:28from that side into this zone than there are crosses on this flank.
13:33And that's because Yamal is doing such a good job on that side,
13:36they were unable to get into as many advantageous crossing positions.
13:40That basically meant that time and time again, as this game rolled on,
13:43they would get into these areas wanting to make those crosses,
13:45they'd isolate Kukere at the back post,
13:47and the cross simply would not arrive.
13:50So they'd end up recycling possession,
13:51they'd end up on the other side of the pitch,
13:53the cross would come in and nothing would happen.
13:56And full disclosure, right,
13:57when France subbed Giroud on with about 10 minutes to go,
14:01I was like, that is about as good a tactical change as you can make.
14:05Because now Spain are going to have to deal
14:07with this total onslaught of balls into the box,
14:09and they're not defending them very well when the delivery is good.
14:13But this is why I said Spain adapted the best across the game,
14:15because it wasn't just the players, it wasn't just Yamal.
14:18De La Fuente also had the bravery, because it worked,
14:21it would have been stupidity if it didn't,
14:23to hook both Yamal and Williams off,
14:26and replace them with wide players who did not care about going forward.
14:29And as a result, with Giroud on the pitch,
14:31with France perfectly set to throw everything into that Spanish box
14:36to find an equaliser,
14:37this was the sum total of their crossing ability in the last 10 minutes.
14:43They had two, and neither were to him.
14:46So yeah, that's how a 16-year-old,
14:49who is somehow two weeks younger than the Claxton song,
14:53It's Not Over Yet,
14:55more or less single-handedly,
14:57sent Spain into the final of the European Championships.
15:02That's mad, isn't it?
15:03In fact, the only thing that could be any madder than that
15:05is that if you have enjoyed this video,
15:07not then subscribing to us here on 442,
15:09because while the Euros may be grinding to a halt sooner than I care to admit,
15:13we've got a whole season of football coming up,
15:15and we're going to get these kind of fun,
15:17tactical breakdowns, player transfers,
15:19all this good stuff's going to be on the channel
15:21all the way across the summer and into the new season.
15:24So please do hit that, and you won't miss any of it.
15:26You can, as ever, grab me across all the social medias here
15:29at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y.
15:31The 442 socials are in the corner of the video.
15:34The comment section is where I'd dearly love you to answer the question,
15:37who is going to win the European Championship?
15:39Is it Spain? Is it Netherlands? Is it England or whatever?
15:44As well as any thoughts, feelings, emotions, comments,
15:48verse, whatever, whatever's going on in your head,
15:51I'd like to read it all, because I don't know boundaries.
15:53In the meantime, though, I am now away to edit this all night,
15:57probably until about four in the morning,
15:58because I've lost all control of my life.
16:01But until next time, which will be the England-Netherlands game,
16:04I'll see you soon.
16:06Adios!