Manchester City’s late turnaround on Wednesday night prevented a disastrous set of Champions League results for the English contingent.
The country was 6-0 down on aggregate and heading for four defeats out of four until Gabriel Jesus and Kevin De Bruyne flipped the narrative at Real Madrid, seemingly confirming that English football is in something of a fallow year.
The Premier League in 2019-20 is an oddly low-quality campaign for most of the country’s best clubs as they stumble through transitional years, plod along with under-qualified young managers, or work out how to adapt to long-term injuries.
And so England is currently on course to have just one team in the Champions League quarter-finals for the first time since 2016-17, the year after Leicester City’s title win highlighted a ‘Big Six’ crisis. We are not quite at that point yet, but the drop-off from continental dominance in 2019 is worrying nonetheless.
Then again, at least three of the four English clubs could still progress.
Manchester City
Typical Pep Guardiola overthinking defined the vast majority of Man City’s 2-1 win at the Santiago Bernabeu. Deploying De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva as false nines in a 4-4-2 surprised everyone, but there was some method in the madness. As the City manager explained after the game, he was worried about Real Madrid’s aggressive pressing and so wanted to play in a more withdrawn manner.
The plan was to drop off the defence in order to find space in midfield, keeping things tight rather than spreading wide and getting counter-pressed. However, Real aren’t as good as Guardiola made them out to be, and creating a claustrophobic first 45 minutes falsely made the hosts look like City’s equals.
He had over-complicated things - and City only grabbed this famous win by reverting to their usual system. Following Isco’s opener Guardiola brought Raheem Sterling on and moved to a more typical 4-4-1-1, with De Bruyne back in the No.10 role and Gabriel Jesus up front.
De Bruyne crossed for Jesus to equalise before Sterling earned a penalty down the left; two moves common in City’s normal approach.
Guardiola has already spoken of having to come up with a whole new plan for the return leg because Zinedine Zidane will have adapted accordingly. Again, this over-estimates his opponents. Man City need simply to play their own game in Guardiola’s usual 4-3-3 and they can blow away this under-par Real Madrid side.
Zidane’s midfield lacks the pace or agility to deal with De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva roaming in the No.10 space, a Sergio Ramos-less defence will struggle to cope with Sergio Aguero, and Raheem Sterling can dominate Dani Carvajal. The Man City manager needs to stop thinking so hard.
GOAL
No comments:
Post a Comment