Two well-known coaches made returns to Ligue 1 at the weekend when Marcelo Bielsa’s Lille side met Claudio Ranieri’s Nantes.

Bielsa’s 3-3-1-3

The Argentinian coach wasted no time in introducing his trademark formation to Lille. The impressive Thiago Mendes played in front of a back three of Edgar le, Amadou and Alonso. Malcuit and Toure acted very wide as wing-backs. Benzia played the #10 role but in the defensive phase he often played alongside Thiago Mendes to create something resembling a 5-4-1. The two wingers played on the last line and stayed fairly wide. Occasionally the ball-near winger would move into the haflspace to create space for his wing-back, but otherwise they played more linear roles with frequent runs into depth.

Wing attacks

Bielsa’s side played a fairly direct and wing-focused game against Nantes. This was largely due to the behaviour of the wingers and wing-backs, as mentioned, they both started very wide, often leading to double occupation of each wing. Benzia, the #10, also supported the wide players with movements out to the wings to create overloads. Unlike many teams who turn to wing play not deliberately, but as a result of unsuitable structures to play through the centre, Lille’s wing play was fairly well coordinated. Benzia provided runs into depth, the timing on overlaps from wing-backs was very good, and they were often able to draw out the Nantes full-backs before releasing the ball into depth, either through pauses from the player on the ball or through their passing combinations. Of course, crucial to this direct style was the speed of Malcuit, El Ghazi, Benzia, Toure and Araujo, which allowed them to take advantage of the large amounts of space naturally found on the wings.

Although the double-wing occupation, particularly on the ball far side, was certainly detrimental to Lille’s overall possession game at times, it did allow them to be very dangerous when using direct switches to the ball-far winger, as it not only allowed the winger to have a momentary 1v1 situation against his opponent, but it also meant that his wing-back was in close support, and Lille could quickly create 2v1 situations if the switch itself was executed fast enough.

Consequences for Lille’s possession game

A structure which is so focused on the wings and on the last line of defence will inevitably have consequences on the overall possession game of a team. The obvious issue is the weak occupation of the central zones. At times Thiago Mendes was essentially a one-man midfield when Benzia moved into higher zones. The lack of presence in the centre and the halfspaces made it very difficult to construct play through the centre, and even if Bielsa is intentionally playing this direct style, it’s useful to have variability, which is something that their structure didn’t really provide.

The initial stages of buildup were not a problem for Lille. The diamond formed by the three centre-backs and Thiago Mendes gave them a good base for possession. Ranieri’s team played in a fairly position-oriented 4-4-2 and they didn’t commit more than two players in the first line, so Lille were fairly comfortable with their numerical superiority in this area.

The problem came when the ball went into deep, wide areas. Despite his difficult role, Thiago Mendes gave a great performance. He was composed, press resistant, and showed a decent range of passes. However given the amount of space he needed to cover, he was sometimes unable to help the buildup play, especially when the ball went to the wing-backs. With the aforementioned lack of presence in the halfspaces and centre, there was often no option for the wing-back to play back inside if Mendes was not there, and he was forced to play the ball up the wing, even if this was not optimal in the situation. One good solution that the wing-backs and wide centre-backs were able to find a couple of times was a flat pass to de Preville, the centre-forward, who could then recirculate the ball with a pass back to Mendes or a centre back in space, allowing Lille to escape pressure in wide areas.

The wingers, as also mentioned earlier, did occasionally move into the halfspaces. This usually occurred on the ball near side when the wide centre-back had the ball. This meant, however, that the pass was completely vertical, and the receiving player was facing his own goal. Therefore these passes in the end, like the passes into de Preville mostly resulted in recirculating the ball back to the defenders or Mendes. Of course, this is a useful tool for Lille, but it still means that they are dependent on the wings for penetration, and this lack of variability in attack may become a problem.

Bielsa man-marks – as always

Unsurprisingly, Lille played against the ball with man-marking across the pitch. This is a reactive approach with many disadvantages (and a few advantages, of course), as many people realise at this point. However against Nantes, this approach worked well for Lille. Nantes in possession were uninspiring, with a flat 4-2-4/4-4-2 shape, they had the weak central occupation of Lille but none of the strong wing dynamics to make up for it. Direct balls down the flanks and into the strikers were unfruitful, and hardly any play was built through the central midfielders, who were easily kept out of buildup play with simple marking from Mendes and Benzia.

Nantes’ attacking play only started to improve slightly in the very late stages of the game when they were already 3-0 down. The wide forwards came slightly narrower and the full-backs moved further forward, and with the front four now more compact they had some slightly better combination play due to their closer proximity.

For most of the game though, both in counter-attacks and in possession, Nantes struggled to construct quality attacks against the Lille defence. This, along with Lille’s domination of possession for the most part meant that the game didn’t really teach us much about how good Lille’s defensive game really is, other than the fact that a five-man defence is useful when your opponents are putting up to four players on the last line – something which is not exactly difficult to figure out.

Given Bielsa’s apparent preference for having one extra centre-back in the defensive line, it will be interesting to see if he changes to a back four in games where they face teams with only one centre-forward. The choice to use three centre-backs in this game may have been with the expectation that Ranieri would use a 4-4-2 (this is just conjecture, of course).

Conclusion

3-0 was a dominant scoreline for Bielsa’s first competitive game as manager of Lille. The performance was encouraging overall, however there is definitely room for improvement with regards to the structure in possession. Regardless, they will surely provide plenty of interesting material for analysis in the coming season.