Real Madrid and Barcelona met in Sunday’s El Clasico – a match which had the potential to blow the La Liga title race wide open.

An early adjustment

For the first 10 minutes of the game, Real Madrid didn’t line up exactly as depicted to the right. Curiously, it was Bale who played on the left wing, and Ronaldo towards the right side. I’m not sure why Zidane might have chosen to do this. Whatever the reason, it caused a problem for Madrid due to Ronaldo’s almost non-existent covering in the defensive phase, which meant that Barcelona were able to consistently find Alba in space on the left side in the opening 10 minutes. Presumably it was for this reason that Bale was moved back to the right wing very quickly.

Madrid’s poor pressing

One of the bigger problems Madrid experienced in this game was in their pressing. As teams often do against Barcelona, they attempted to destabilise Barca’s buildup by applying a high, man-oriented press, which in theory allows them access to each player, making it very difficult for Barcelona to play out cleanly.

However, Madrid’s press was ineffective in achieving this, and Barca were able to build from the first line with relative ease.

When starting from ter Stegen, Barcelona set up in a familiar fashion – the centre backs wide of the penalty box, fullbacks high and wide, joined in the second line by Busquets and Iniesta, to form a 2-4 structure (3-4 if you include ter Stegen).

Madrid of course tried to match this with their man orientations – Benzema and Ronaldo (to a lesser extent) pressured ter Stegen and the centre backs, Modric generally oriented himself towards Iniesta, Kroos towards Busquets, Bale positioned deeper with Alba.

The first problem with Madrid’s press was simply the lack of intensity in their shifting movements and in their tracking of their direct opponent. When you opt for a man-oriented system, you are effectively sacrificing some of your compactness for access to the ball and the opponent. If the intensity is missing, and opposition players are able to separate from their markers, then you have sacrificed compactness for no advantage. Barcelona naturally benefited from the time and space afforded to them by Madrid.

The second problem came from Barcelona’s structure, namely the movement of Messi and Rakitic into the centre, where they could overload the spaces around Casemiro who was lacking protection due to the pressing commitments of Kroos and Modric. This is depicted in the scene above. Marcelo couldn’t necessarily help as he was seemingly focused on Roberto rather than wanting to come inside. This made Rakitic in particular a successful outlet for Barcelona when evading pressure.

There were a couple of occasions where Madrid were able to force ter Stegen to kick the ball long or out of play. This was usually due to a directional pressing action from Benzema forcing ter Stegen onto his weaker left foot. Alcacer still managed to contend these clearances fairly well. Overall it could be said that Madrid’s press in this game seemed to consist of a collection of individual actions, rather than coordinated collective action.

Similarly ineffective defending

Madrid were also fairly poor when defending in deeper situations. Again, there was a notable lack of intensity and compactness in their midfield, which allowed Barcelona to be fairly comfortable in their ball circulation and move the ball into higher areas.

Madrid’s structure when defending deep was fairly lopsided, with Ronaldo usually staying fairly high up, but acting very passively against the ball in terms of pressure. On the other side, Bale was positioned much deeper, and wider, often very far from Carvajal. Bale’s deeper position against Jordi Alba was probably an attempt to deal with the threat of Alba’s trademark late blindside runs into the box.

The positioning, and passivity, of Ronaldo and Bale had clear effects on Real Madrid’s central midfielders – namely in the amount of ground they were forced to cover – against Barcelona of all teams. Kroos and Modric both had to move into wider positions to provide cover in areas where a winger might usually be expected to defend. Given these responsibilities, Casemiro was also forced at times to vacate the #6 position and move higher up the pitch to pressure the ball when Busquets had it, or when Messi dropped deep to receive the ball. This of course contributed to the lack of compactness when defending, with weak defensive connections between midfielders.

Barca’s midfield rhombus

Luis Enrique chose not to go with the 3-4-3 diamond formation he has been using over the last couple of months, however there were some loose similarities with that system and the one used against Madrid – namely the use of a diamond/rhombus shape in midfield.

Busquets, as usual, acted as the #6 at the base of midfield and was crucial to Barcelona’s possession game with his press resistance. To his left was Iniesta, who also remained fairly deep throughout. He was important in retaining possession and could also balance Alba’s forward movements on the left side by remaining deeper in the left halfspace.

Messi started at the #10 position, but oriented himself more towards the right side when Barca were in possession. He was often able to drop into deep areas and change the tempo of the game with his explosive dribbles and passing range. Meanwhile Rakitic complimented this with his advanced positioning and forward running from the right halfspace.

Alcacer and Suarez effectively played as a front two in possession, both playing centrally on the last line. They were possibly a little too static at times, but they at least served to occupy two or three Madrid defenders with their positioning. Overall the formation suited the personnel in Barca’s midfield in terms of player roles.

Opportunities for Madrid to counter

A promising aspect of the game for Real Madrid, as is often the case in Clasicos was the counter attack.

Barcelona did attempt to counterpress ball-losses in the final third, however Madrid were able to play through it, partly due to some good individual press resistance, but also due to the Barcelona counterpress which was often poorly supported, leaving individual players to cover large amounts of space. For example in the scene above Busquets is trying to cover two passing lanes.

Aside from the obvious threat of a Real Madrid counter attack, the fact that Madrid were able to break Barca’s counterpress hampered Barca’s ability to exert control over the game and sustain longer periods of possession.

The possibility of the counter attack was also of course the flip-side of Ronaldo’s earlier-mentioned lack of defensive covering – by staying high up he is able to make the most of counter attacks by virtue of his starting position.

The counter attacks became more frequent in the 2nd half as Barca’s counterpressing game became notably less intense than in the 1st half, while they still committed players forward in search of goals, leaving space for Madrid to exploit.

Conclusion

Barca edged out Real Madrid in a dramatic last 20 minutes. Both teams had chances throughout the game, and with an xG of 3 to Barca’s 2.3 (per Caley_graphics) Madrid perhaps had the better chances. Despite this, I personally think that Barcelona’s overall performance was slightly better than that of Madrid.

That is not to say that Barca didn’t have problems of their own, aside from the counterpressing – for example they sometimes struggled with weak control of the halfspaces when in a medium-block due to the passivity of the wingers and Messi. This gave time and space to the likes of Kroos & Modric to operate in.

In terms of the impact of the result – the La Liga title race is now finely poised with Barcelona and Real Madrid tied on points, however Madrid still hold a crucial game in hand.