Clásico analysis: Rafa risked and lost

In the end, Rafa Benítez tried to get the best of both worlds. He opted for a line-up which included all his most powerful offensive players, the BBC as well as James. This decision was risky in two ways: first of all, he had to drop Casemiro, the player who had provided cover for the more creative midfielders Kroos and Modric and the more advanced ones in the previous games. This meant that although there were more attacking players in the team, they also had to fulfil more defensive duties, a task in which most of them did not shine in tonight's game. Secondly, the decision to field three players (James, Bale and Benzema) who were not fully fit during the last weeks (especially the frenchman, who had not played since the start of October) carries the risk of having too many players who are not yet at their peak performance level in physical terms, which might especially harm high pressing efforts. He took these risks because he obviously wanted to have enough attacking power on the pitch in order to exploit possible weaknesses and because he trusted in his players and their defensive contribution, which would have been necessary to maintain the compact block he wanted his team to defend Barcelona's offensive efforts. This failed utterly; his team neither managed to create a lot of danger for the opponent's goal except in some periodes in the second half when the game already was decided. On the other hand, the fact that four of his players played only marginal roles in the efforts to win the ball back when Barcelona had it meant that his defensive four and the two central midfielders were often uncovered and outnumbered by the sheer attacking power of Barcelona. Benítez, who tried two make the best out of the two options he had (giving up elements of his playing style in order to counter the Barcelona threat, as Mourinho did, or maintaining the general style, like Ancelotti) which I have described earlier today, gambled and lost. He got neither.

His counterpart Luis Enrique did not take as much risk as Benítez. He could have fielded Messi, who like some of Madrid's starters had not played in a while, but decided to bench him and bring him on in the second half. His role was taken by Sergi Roberto and not like more often in the previous weeks by Munir. The rest of the usual 4-3-3 formation contained no surprises. To be fair, Enrique was also in a more comfortable position than Benítez; his team was three points ahead, therefore a draw would have been a result they could have lived with, meanwhile Benítez was under pressure to win to minimize the difference in points between the two teams. 

Line ups

The idea of Benítez was in general to defend compactely and let blau-grana have possession. When Barcelona was consolidated in possession, the block should retreat and not exercise pressure on the ballplaying opponent until about 35 meters in front of their own goal. Only in certain situations, for instance after goal kicks which were taken short and after possession losses in high and wide areas did Madrid try to win the ball back farther away from their own goal and applied some measures of counterpressing. Since this was not well-structured, they managed only seldom to create superiority in numbers and Barça was usually able to exit these situations without getting into danger of losing the ball or exposing their own goal. The general approach of winning the ball back in deeper zones had the effect that Barcelona controlled possession as was to suspect before the game. The value (55.9%) is itself a bit misleading because it was altered a lot after the game was decided, when Barcelona decided to sit a bit deeper and let Madrid have more of the ball. During the first twenty minutes of the game, Barcelona had 70% of possession, which is a better indicator of the real strength of both teams in today's encounter. 

 

The difficulty was that only six to seven players actively participated in the defensive efforts. Bale was the first pressing player when Barcelona built up play from their back four during most of the first half. During the opening minutes of the game Cristiano joined Benzema as a second striker when Madrid tried to press high (seldom enough), but Benítez switched Bale from the left flank in this 4-4-2 formation against the ball into the second striker role, moving Cristiano back into midfield after about 15 minutes. With either partner, Benzema was barely involved in pressing. If this was due to his lack of fitness or a tactical instruction of his coach is hard to judge, but his general low inclusion into his team's actions indicates the first option. He only played 18 passes during the game, the lowest number of any player on the field who played the full 90 minutes and six less than his own goalkeeper. When Barcelona got over this first pressing line, which was usually the case, Madrid retreated into deep positions as already outlined above. However, since Bale and Benzema were already ahead of the ball and Cristiano was usually not participating in defensive actions at all, Madrid had only seven players left to stop Barcelona's attacks. Of what should have been a narrow and compact 4-4-2 formation, only an asymmetric 4-3 cripple was left (see next picture). The result was that they were easily outnumbered, especially in central areas. The situation was too much for the two central midfielders, that is why a safety-first line up (including Casemiro) would probably have been the better choice for this game. The team tried to balance these weaknesses by single players (especially central midfielders and centre backs) leaving the formation occasionally in order to obstruct passing or ball reception, but this was seldom effective and most of the time only left even more holes in their formation which Barcelona were able to exploit, especially in the cases of the first and third goal.

Defensive shape of Real Madrid. Cristiano is not in position, leaving a lot of space exposed in his back. He obviously is waiting for his teammates to win the ball back and send him a long pass but does not participate in defensive actions. Kroos and Marcelo have to cover additional space, the whole team tends to get stretched and outbumbered. Bale had moved to a deeper position in pressing after halftime.

When in possession, Madrid usually looked for the first pass to be played long, especially after experiencing Barcelona's sophisticated pressing from early on in the game. They seldom managed to play the ball with shorter passes into the opponent's half. If so, they preferred to play in central areas until entering the attacking third, in which they usually played the sideway pass. 40% of their attacks came from their right side, due to the fact that on this side, James usually stayed on his position and received support by the vertical Danilo, meanwhile Marcelo on the other side was most of the time on his own because of Cristiano's regular runs into central positions. These runs were certainly part of their strategy. When they managed to build up their play from behind, Benzema tended to drop deeper and leave space behind him, which Cristiano was to exploit. This strategy was however not successful since Barcelona simply overloaded central areas (see the clear difference between both teams) personally and obstructed precise passes into these zones. They left Madrid effectively only three options: dribblings, long balls and crossings from wide areas. Madrid crossed excessively (27 times, of which five intents found a teammate) and played more long balls than usually this season (16% in comparison to 10% on average in the previous season), but found no effective way of getting behind the Barcelona defence until the game was decided. The main reason for this was (besides too large distances between the players, which were effectively covered by Barcelona, and the use of unefficient strategies such as crossing and long balls) was that their movement patterns were too static and too much focused on central areas. Once in the first half, Modric moved rightwards and allowed James to move centrally which resulted in the biggest chance of Madrid in the first half. But in general these complex moves were rare.

 

Barcelona on their behalf clearly had the plan to actively intercept Madrid's build up play from early on. They pressed centre backs and central midfielders aggressively by attacking them directly and trying to close passing lanes. The intent was to let them no other option than the long ball forwards. The most common pattern was for the central midfielders to move forwards and support the lone striker Suárez in his pressing attempts. The wingers dropped deeper and controlled the space between the ball and the opponent full backs (and any other player which would have dropped or moved sidewards). Neymar was especially active in defensive actions in the first half, played only 16 passes during the first 45 minutes but it was due to him that Madrid were not able to use their right side effectively. The holding midfielder Busquets provided cover in case the first pressing attempt failed, meanwhile the back four stayed on the same height and tried to minimize the space between the lines. When Madrid managed to get through the first line of pressing, Barcelona tried to form a central compact formation with all of the players in their own half. The result of their efforts was considerable. They forced Madrid's back four into a lot of unprecise passing. Every one of the five defensive players which played today (including Carvajal who came on for Marcelo) had a lower pass completion rate than in the first eleven games of the season. The worst case was Varane, who dropped from his usual rate of almost 92% to an embarassing 72%.

 

Typical Barcelona pressing moment. The wide player farer away from the ball (in this case Neymar) moves inwards, but stays approximately as high as his counterpart, meanwhile the central midfielders and the central striker exercise pressure on the ball playing opponent and the players around him.

Unlike in previous years, Barcelona use their aggressive pressing not only to win the ball back and circulate it afterwards, but actively exploit transition moments through vertical play. They are however still one of the best teams in the world when in possession and showed that they can use these qualities even if their best player is sitting on the bench. When in possession, their full backs moved up high the pitch in order to provide width. The wide midfielders Neymar and Roberto were allowed to run or dribble diagonally in order to exploit central spaces which Madrid's bad positioning had exposed. The two central midfielders displayed different behaviour in these phases. Meanwhile Rakitic usually ran forward to additionally enter the space which Cristiano should help defend, Iniesta was way more active and made also a lot of horizontal runs to the left flank, from which he would often play long diagonal balls into the free space. This helps explain why Barcelona, which before displayed a very even distribution of attacks from the centre and down both sides, attempted 42% of their attacks in this game from their left side. In central midfield positions, they tried to move forward using quick passing combinations before incorporating the three players highest up the pitch, often giving their counterparts lectures in one-touch football. This explains their high amount of passes played (50 more than in the previous games on average). Suárez on his part also covered a lot of space and frequently moved from central positions into the halfspaces, especially when the wide players were moving into central positions in order to stretch the opposition back four. Before the first goal he was therefore able to exploit one of the runs Ramos had made, leaving his position in the back four, and could finish almost without being disturbed. 

To be honest, the game was more or less over at half time. Benítez tried to save the game by letting his team attack higher up the pitch while at the same time moving Bale back in pressing in order to let Barcelona have less space in build up play, but he was unable to effectively correct the errors of the first half. Instead of moving Cristiano to the centre a let some other player fill the position he was barely found in, Benítez let Marcelo (later Danilo) and Kroos struggle with way too much space to cover for another half. Barcelona quickly castigated Madrid with another two goals which were a result of Madrid's back four getting out of position too easily, meanwhile Madrid managed to create some chances afterwards without scoring one. Bravo occupied the role which was reserved for Navas earlier in the season and made some magnificent saves, but overall Madrid was never close to Barça in terms of shot quality, despite a final STR of 0.5. Only in the 68th minute did Real Madrid counter for the first time successfully in the game. 

 

Some interesting details in the second half were Messi's deep role, who played almost the same position as Rakitic who he had replaced, before temporarily moving into a higher position, which turned the formation of Enrique's team basically into a flat 4-4-2, the one Benítez would have wanted his team to play in when out of possession. On the other side of the pitch, Carvajal showed that when fully fit he should be the first choice for right back in Madrid, given that he offered much more diagonality to the team than Danilo who most of the time ran down and back the side line. As a result, Carvajal was involved in two shots (one taken by himself plus one key pass) in little more than half an hour of play, meanwhile Danilo was involved in not a single one during the whole game.

In the end, Benítez gambled and lost. Enrique's side pointed out their weaknesses and shoed no mercy in exploiting them. The title race is perhaps already over after less than one third of the season. The question remains whether Benítez is given the chance to correct these errors or if he is himself blamed as part of the problem and sacked correspondingly, as some Spanish media already suppose. This would make his first Clásico as a coach also his last. His only positive thought tonight might be that José Mourinho suffered a similar debacle in his first game in charge in Madrid against Barcelona but had the opportunity to build the team of records which won the liga the following season, the last league title for Madrid so far.

Clásico preview: two ever-closer teams?

Ahead of tonight's clash between probably the two best teams in the world, there are still some issues which are open and up for an educated guess. Besides some personal issues (for instance concerning the state of James or Messi), one of the most interesting questions will be how both teams will start the game in tactical and stylistic terms. Times in which the games between these two clubs were not only battles of club culture and transfer philosophies but also of playing styles are over. Instead, both clubs have come closer in certain aspects, for instance in terms of transfer spending. A closer analysis of some KPI of the last eight liga clásicos shows that this process also takes place in terms of playing style. Meanwhile the games between the clubs when coaches of the likes of Mourinho and Guardiola were in office were marked by a strict antagonism of reactive and rigid, transition-based football applied by Real Madrid and the uncompromising possession football of Guardiola's Barça, changes of managers have led to the evolution of both clubs' playing style away from the ideal points in the continuum between possession- and transition-based football.

In the first four of these eight games, in which Real Madrid were still under the command of José Mourinho, Barcelona clearly dominated possession. They never had less than 60% of it, the values in games against Real Madrid were furthermore only slightly lower than in all the other games. Mourinho did in other words normally not try to obstruct Barcelona's usual style of play but was happy to let them take the initiative, let his own team sit deep and wait for the opponent's errors in order to exploit them rapidly. His team played on average only slightly more than 300 passes in these four games, way below the average value in these two seasons (538 in 2011/12 and 478 in 2012/13, respectively). He adapted his own tactics while not trying to force Barcelona into adapting theirs. At least in these four games, his approach was quite successful; Madrid won two of them and lost only one. Aggregate TSR and STR values of these four games (0.57 and 0.59 in favour of Real Madrid) also show that success in these games was not down to luck, but in general the tactics employed by Mourinho's Madrid were effective in containing Barcelona's attacking power. 

The pattern since then has changed. The number of passes played by Real Madrid in direct duels has risen constantly, meanwhile that of Barcelona declined steadily. In other words, Madrid under Mourinho's successor Ancelotti adapted a more active style in trying to have more of the ball and at the same time destroying Barcelona's game earlier and higher up the pitch. Although they still played less passes against their rivals than against other teams on average with a slightly lower success rate, they also allowed them to play less passes. Graph 1 shows this development, using as indicators the percentage of all passes in the respective game played by Real Madrid and the team's pass success.

Graph 1

Data shows the important differences between Mourinho's and Ancelotti's sides. Meanwhile in the four earlier games Real Madrid played 30 or less percent of all passes in all but one game, they played less than 40% only in one of the latter games. Similarly, passing success was constantly below 80% under Mourinho's mandate but only once while Ancelotti was in office. Again, Madrid also had a higher pass rate under Ancelotti in all other games than under Mourinho, but differences were only minor in those, meanwhile it dropped sharply when facing Barça under Mourinho's reign and much less under Ancelotti's. Interestingly, Ancelotti's approach in games against the rival did not turn out to be as successful as Mourinho's pragmatism. His team won only one game and lost the remaining three, a much worse balance than his predecessor's. Like results, also performance indicators had declined in comparison to the four games under Mourinho (TSR to 0.47 and STR to 0.53).

Pass success rate is among other factors (such as passing skill of the passer, the positioning of his team mates, height and intensity of the opponent's pressing, etc.) strongly dependent on the length of passes played. Simply put, the longer a pass is, the lower the probability it is completed, since the difficulty of placing it correctly increases with distance. The data of graph 1 lets one suppose therefore that Real Madrid also played more short passes in direct confrontations with los culés in the latter games than when Mourinho was in charge. 

Graph 2 confirms this hypothesis. In each of the games under Mourinho, at least one in five passes was longer than 25 yards. In one game, the rate was even below 70%, although in general Mourinho did not take a long ball approach. In all games, the rate of passes shorter than 25 yards was slightly below 90%. This underlines again the altered approach Mourinho usually opted for against Barcelona. In line with the reliance on deep defending and quick counter attacks, his team did not waste a lot of time trying to keep the ball in possession, but rather tried to pass it quickly into more dangerous zones after winning it back in their own half. Under Ancelotti, the rate was below 80% under once and almost reached 90% in his second year. In other words, the style of his team against Barcelona in terms of passing was almost undistinguishable from the one in games against other opposition.

Graph 2

On the other hand, the curve of Barcelona is much smoother than the one of their counterparts. Under Guardiola's successor Tito Vilanova (games 3 and 4), they played even more short passes, while the rate during the respective first game under the following coaches Martino and Enrique. 

Since it is relatively hard to determine whether these statistics are based solely on altered approaches in single games (although it is likely) or down to a more profound evolution of a team's playing style and in order to put them in context, graph 3 shows a comparison of some of the style-relevant indicators over the full seasons. The values were calculated by dividing Real Madrid's average by Barcelona's. Hence, if the value is below one, Barcelona displayed a higher value in comparison to their counterparts and vice versa. 

Graph 3

Indeed, values in 19 out of 20 observations (four KPI in five seasons) are below one, hence Barcelona performed "better" in these terms than Real Madrid. There is however an interesting development going on. Additionally, differences are not equal among KPI. The lines of pass success and the percentage of short passes are relatively constant and not much below one, i.e. the differences between Barcelona and Real Madrid were only minor and did not change a lot during the last four seasons and the current one. The differences in possession and passes per game are much more pronounced and volatile. If we look at the evolution of the differences over time, we observe a trend towards 1 for all indicators. In other words, the teams are becoming more similar in terms of playing style in the long term. The value of each indicator is higher in this season than they were in 2011/12, the last one in which Real Madrid managed to win the league. There was a sharp decline for all indicators in the following season, the last one under Mourinho, and a smaller one between the first and second season under Ancelotti. The long-term development is in any case upward. Under their new manager Benítez, Real Madrid manage for the first time a better pass success rate than their Catalan counterparts, although values for this season are still based on a quite low number of games. The game tonight will show to which dimension the positive trend in this season is down to substantial development.

What can we then take out of these findings and expect for tonight's game? Despite the ongoing trend of harmonization of the teams' playing style, it is still the case that Barcelona tend more towards a possession-based football style. They had more of the ball in all of the last clásicos and will probably do so today as well. In line with last year's games, their amount of possession will however be most likely between 50 and 55% and not above 60. Both teams will play roughly the same percentage of their passes short and have more or the less the same pass success rate. The biggest unknown besides the fitness level of some key players is Rafa Benítez, who will coach in a clásico for the first time and won only four out of his eleven games as a coach against Barcelona. His regularly underlined focus on his teams' balance indicates that he might be more of a pragmatist in the sense of Mourinho than an Ancelotti-like idealist when it comes to facing Barça. In this case, it would not be too surprising if he decided to play Casemiro, benched two of his galactic offensive players (probably Isco and James) and ordered his team to stay deep and narrow, exploiting Cristiano's and Bale's pace in offensive transitions. His team's numbers are however the most similar to Barcelona of any Madrid team of the last years, which is why he might also opt for a more proactive approach tonight. What is clear is that the game will no more represent a clash of football style civilization as it did some seasons ago.

All data extracted from whoscored.com.

Click on graphs to enlarge.