Sporting punished for being too focused on wide areas and crossing

The battle over leadership in the Portuguese highest league saw a very interesting game in tactical terms with two quite different half-times. After a passive start by the hosts, which was in part caused by Benfica’s high and intensive pressing, they took over control after the break without exploiting their superiority for a long time. In the end, the visitors were able to defend their marginal advantage until the final whistle.

Line ups and initial approaches

With the notable exception of central defence, where Oliveira and Naldo missed the game due to injury or a lack of fitness, and the surprising start of Bruno César instead of Gelson Martins, ex-Benfica and now-Sporting coach Jorge Jesús fielded his most-used players in the starting line-up. The inclusion of César seems justified ex-post given the specific role he played in the offensive midfield trio, out of which he was the most active player. He frequently moved up the pitch vertically and diagonally, trying to create numerical majorities in central areas and creating space for Pereira, which the latter was however unable to exploit. César would even switch to the left side for some time in the first half, leaving the right side totally uncovered since none of his teammates balanced this move. The intention behind this was unclear, and the asymmetric experiment was ended quickly.

Rui Vitória for his part had to do without his number one goalkeeper, veteran Júlio César, who was replaced by his younger fellow countryman Ederson (who had a good and faultless match). Benfica also were not able to field their usual central defence, but young Lindelöf was comfortable in the position usually played by Luisão or Lisandro. The rest of the team was made up by the usual starting eleven.

Line-ups with some typical movement patterns and the tactical duel between Carvalho and Jonas highlighted

This team started the game in a very proactive fashion. They organized themselves in an old-fashioned 4-4-2 formation against the ball, but pressed the home team very intensely during the first twenty minutes. The whole team moved up the pitch when in possession and did not retreat after losing the ball, but started aggressive counterpressing efforts, were regularly able to win the ball back quickly and hence keep Sporting away from their goal. 

They initially planned to build up their play in successive manner from the back, but quickly realized that Sporting would not allow them to play a continuous build-up game. Especially their full backs got isolated rapidly due to Sporting’s aggressive pressing in wide areas, the high positioning of their own wide midfielders when in possession and the rare support provided by their central midfielders. Benfica tried to overcome this problem by switching to a 4-2-4 when in possession with a narrow positioning of the offensive four, but were unable to cope with the obstruction of their build-up play. Their reaction was to opt for a long ball strategy after the initial minutes, often looking for Mitroglou as their target man, who was to forward the high passes to Jonas and Gaitán. The latter provided width in the final third, meanwhile his counterpart Pizzi stayed a lot deeper and narrower. One key player was Jonas, who acted very actively in central as well as wide areas. Once while drifting left, he was able to cross the ball into the direction of Mitroglou, which ultimately ended in the game-winning goal.

Sporting started the game much more cautiously than their counterparts and focused especially on counting attacks in the starting phase of the game. They defended much deeper, never applying an offside trap (which was an often used tool by the guests). One of the most interesting aspects of their defensive approach was the strict man orientation of William Carvalho on Jonas during the first half. He followed him almost everywhere in central areas and left him only wide zones to operate freely. When in possession, Carvalho’s task was to fall back between the left centre back and the left back in order to build their game from behind.

The general difficulties with Sporting’s game during possession was however an inadequate positioning of the more defensive players, which left holes especially in the centre of the pitch and them unable to link with the offensive players. At times, Silva was the only reachable player in the centre of the pitch, since João Mário too often moved forward into the same line as Slimani and was thereafter no viable passing option any longer. The centre backs positioned themselves too narrow, which meant that the full backs could not move up adequately and had to stay too deep. At the same time, their focus on trying to move the ball to the wings as quickly as possible was ever present. The build-up play was therefore pretty quickly ended by Benfica’s aggressive high pressing, leaving often only long balls as viable options for Sporting’s full backs, which were often enough useless due to Benfica’s offside trap.

A game-changing goal and adaptions after the break

In the 20th minute, Jesús’ decision to use Carvalho in an unusual, highly restricted role was punished by Benfica, although admittedly chance played an important role in the development of the goal situation. A cross by Jonas was cleared by the Sporting defence, hence the situation was almost over. But Carvalho, not needed to cover Jonas since the latter had drifted wide, was too focused on securing the last line of Sporting’s defence instead of moving a bit more forward to attack the second ball. He was therefore unable to intercept the far shot by Samiris, which was deflected and landed in front of Mitroglou, who exploited Carvalho’s slip to the ground and had no difficulties in putting his side ahead.

This goal changed the character of the game completely. Benfica, which was before the goal the dominant team, decided to stay deeper and let Sporting have control of the game. As a result, at half time possession was largely equilibrated. This does however not mean that Benfica did reduce their activities on the pitch to defending their lead. Their more cautious approach included longer phases of possession in their own part of the pitch (something almost completely unseen before the goal) and the maintenance of the long ball approach, Mitroglou and Jonas were largely free from defensive duties except some minor runs with the intention of pushing the deeper Sporting players sidewards.

At the same time, Sporting seemed to have no actual plan how to use their possession and turn it into danger for the guests’ goal. They maintained their focus on attacks down the flanks, but were unable to create dynamics on the wings, in spite of usually outnumbering Benfica in wide areas (especially on the left side in the middle third). They were therefore unable to create a single goal scoring opportunity within the box before half time, their chances were due to set pieces and shots from outside the box. 

The second half started in the same way as the first one. Benfica started pressing high up the pitch, but Sporting coped much better due to some specific adjustments made during the break which made that Benfica’s aggressive play lasted only for a couple of minutes. First of all, Carvalho was rid of the defensive impositions and allowed to move high up the pitch in the offensive phase of Sporting’s game and even dribbling the ball into the box, allowing them to attack with one man more.

Similarly, the wide offensive midfielders now tended to move in much smarter ways than before half time. Jesús had moved César definitely to the left side (until his substitution after an hour) and João Mário the right one, meanwhile Ruiz was given much more freedom when having the ball in central positions, but also had to support Slimani in his pressing efforts. Instead of getting isolated in pairs with the full backs between the second and last third in wide areas, the wingers moved diagonally towards the centre of the pitch, providing passing options and being able to start pressing if the ball got lost. This happened quite frequently, since crossing it was still Sporting’s preferred way of getting it into the box. They were supported in gaining the ball back by Silva who pushed up and played almost as high as Ruiz and a higher defensive line of Sporting. Their movements allowed the full backs, especially Jefferson on the left side, to move higher up the pitch and participate much more actively in the attacking situations of their team.

As time went by, Sporting managed to push Benfica more and more into their own half. Even counter attacks became more and more seldom, since Pizza and Gaitán got reduced almost completely to defending, partially due to Sporting’s changed approach down the wings. At times, Renato was the only midfielder who supported Jonas and Mitroglou (later Jiménez) in their counter attacking efforts. This does however not mean that Benfica permanently got into serious trouble. They were quite comfortable defending Sporting’s crossing, especially Lindelöf, who in the course of the game turned into some kind of man marker for Slimani. Before the crosses, they were ok with letting Sporting play, defending their own area and only seldom leaving their strict formation (if ever, only Renato and Pizzi moved forward in pressing efforts).

There was only one time when Sporting acutally managed to create real danger, which resulted in a terrible miss from Ruiz in a situation which was played almost perfectly. Slimani had received a diagonal pass from wide into the area and played the ball immediately to Ruiz, who managed to put the ball over the empty goal. This situation clearly showed that short, diagonal passing would be a better option for Sporting to create danger, but still they opted for the cross afterwards far too often.

The final minutes of the game were characterized by efforts of both coaches to change the result of the game using substitutions. Jesús brought on the more offensive Schelotto instead of João Pereira and replaced Silva with Gelson. This meant that Sporting had almost the same formation as Benfica, a flat 4-4-2 with João Mário besides Carvalho in central midfield and Slimani and Gutiérrez as strikers. At the same time, Vitória opted for strengthening the centre of the pitch by sending on Fejsa and later Sálvio, which meant that Benfica played the last couple of minutes with three central midfielders, still defending the box with fervour and not disclosing the possibility of leaving the opponent strikers offside.

Conclusions

In the end, it was a tough result to take for Sporting. They had not allowed Benfica a whole lot of goal scoring opportunities and dominated the game during three fourths of it. They were however not creative and dynamic enough to create danger themselves with the exception of Ruiz’ chance in the second half. Minor tactical errors such as the decision to impose predominantly defensive chores on Carvalho and their insistence on crossing the ball instead of looking for other solutions were castigated by Benfica, for whom everything went according to plan.