The highlight of Wednesday’s Champions League qualifying matches was the clash between Napoli and Nice. The Naples outfit came into the match with a full-strength side in Sarri’s usual 4-3-3. Favre on the other hand opted for a 5-3-2 shape, perhaps at least partially due to the absence of Balotelli and new signing Wesley Sneijder.

Napoli exploit Nice’s right-side

Napoli’s dynamic left sided attack proves too much for many teams, and Nice were no different. Firstly, the two strikers in Nice’s 5-3-2 formation were reluctant to press in wide positions or even sometimes move into the halfspace. They were fairly oriented towards the centre and preventing passes into Jorginho. Therefore, when Napoli had the ball in wide positions, right wing-back Jallet and right central-midfielder Koziello found themselves having to apply pressure, even over large distances. This of course created space for Napoli to play into in the left halfspace and wing area.

Napoli used this to full effect, and created these situations intentionally by circulating the ball on the left side in order to draw out the Nice defenders. The large distances that Jallet in particular was sometimes required to cover in order to pressure the ball meant that the Napoli player often had time on the ball to pick his pass inside. As always, Napoli were well connected on the left side and had few problems in moving the ball from the wing into the halfspace cleanly.

The synergies created between Napoli’s left-sided players were key in exploiting Nice in this way. Hamsik was often the one dropping deeper and wide and using this positioning to pick up the ball and draw out Koziello. Ghoulam could bind Jallet to the touchline and prevent him from helping fill the spaces left by Koziello. Insigne at times created a decisional crisis in Souquet, Nice’s right central-defender by dropping between the lines, again in the space created by Koziello’s pressing commitments. Souquet was then faced with the choice of following him into midfield and leaving space in the defensive line, or allowing Insigne to combine with Mertens and Hamsik between the lines.

Callejon’s blindside movements

Another prominent threat from Napoli was the blindside movements of Callejon. With Napoli focusing on the left side and attracting opposition players into those zones, opportunities are created for Callejon to take advantage of this with his blindside runs into depth.

An important reason why Nice struggled to deal with this was down to a lack of coordination between the left-central defender, Le Marchand, and the left wing-back, Sarr. When the ball was on the left, Callejon often took up positions on the last line, in between these two Nice defenders. The lack of coordination in dealing with these runs was seemingly due to a lack of communication leading to different approaches to dealing with Callejon’s movement. When the ball was played, Sarr would usually step-up, attempting to play the Spanish forward offside. Le Marchand on the other hand, not having Callejon in his field of vision, didn’t step-up, and tried to cover the run once he realised the ball was being played. This meant that he was neither properly marked or played offside, and found himself free in the box on a few occasions.

Side-note on provoking pressure

Although there are clear differences in the respective game-models of each team, there is one aspect that Napoli share in common with Real Madrid, and achieve to good effect, which is the way in which they use a stable structure and ball circulation in order to provoke opponents into pressing them in uncomfortable areas.

Napoli’s use of this idea is perhaps more intentional than Madrid’s however, as they use a range of tools in order to achieve this, whereas with Madrid, it may just be more of a knock-on effect from the deep positioning of Kroos and Modric, as well as players such as Isco coming deep to support ball-circulation.

Problems with halfspace coverage

A common weakness in teams that use a 5-3-2 in defence (or other formations with three midfielders in the defensive phase) is weaker coverage of the halfspace. With three midfielders, it is difficult to cover the width of both halfspaces, and as such, the ball-far halfspace is often open after the three man midfield has shifted to the ball-near side.

Napoli were able to take advantage of this a couple of times, such as in the scene below where Hamsik receives the ball in space on the ball-far side, due to the narrow coverage, and immediately the defenders have a another decisional crisis as to who should pressure him. In the end, they both do, and they leave space for Insigne running into depth.

Nice struggle against flexible Napoli press

Although Napoli are rightly admired for their great play in possession, their defensive game is also very underrated. They were able to shut-out Nice impressively with flexible option-oriented pressing. Nice’s buildup was roughly a 3-1-4-2 shape, with their key player being Seri looking to build play from the #6 role.

Napoli seemed to prefer to direct Nice’s buildup to the left side in this game, and isolate Sarr on the left wing in order to force turnovers. Mertens would try to prevent Nice from switching the ball across the defensive line to the right. Hamsik would then shift across and press Seri from his blindside. Callejon would press the ball but try to remain narrow, again in an attempt to force Nice wide. Behind him, Allan and Jorginho stayed fairly close and covered Lees Melou, Nice’s left central midfielder. Alternatively, Allan would move up to support Callejon. Insigne was fairly wide on the left, but it was a position from which he could blindside press Koziello if he received the ball, as well as quickly pressure any other switch of play. Napoli’s setup forces the ball towards Sarr on the touchline, and unlike Napoli, Nice rarely have an appropriate structure to be able to connect back inside when the ball goes to the wing under pressure, and turnovers were common.

It wasn’t only in these situations that Napoli’s press did well, however. Across the pitch they were flexible in their coverage with Jorginho even moving forward to press on occasion, demonstrating the aforementioned flexibility of Napoli’s option-oriented system.

Nice’s structure in general was fairly weak while in possession. Most of their ball-circulation was between the back five and Seri, and they rarely posed much of a threat to Napoli’s defence. They may have benefitted from Koziello being more involved in their buildup play. This was one positive side effect for Napoli of forcing the ball onto Nice’s left side – it limited the involvement of Koziello who is one of Nice’s more press-resistant playmakers. Lees Melou was rarely of much assistance during deep buildup situations, and having Koziello involved and closer to the ball may have made it more difficult for Napoli to force turnovers.

Conclusion

In the end it was an impressive performance for Napoli. They were in full control for the whole match, and probably should’ve won by more. For Nice, two late red-cards only serves to make their task more difficult in the second leg.

Napoli’s impressive xG tally doesn’t even include two huge chances from Callejon and Milik who failed to make contact with the ball as it came into the box, thus they were not counted as shots.