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.