00:00Hello there everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel and of course welcome to Adam Cleary, that's me, and
00:05PSG are into the final of the Club World Cup.
00:10And you know, I was really looking forward to talking about this game, but finally going to give me an
00:14opportunity to show you how Xavi Alonso is using Trent Alexander-Arnold in this exciting, young, fresh, new Real Madrid
00:22team.
00:22But then of course, I pulled out with an injury, didn't he, like three hours before kick-off, so nevertheless.
00:35Right, now unless you've been on, I don't know, Love Island for the last month, you'll be aware that all
00:39of our Club World Cup coverage is brought to you in partnership with DAZN, who are not only the official
00:45broadcasters of the tournament, whoo, but also my personal stylists as well.
00:50And obviously, you know, jokes on them, because as a lifetime goth, you do not need to sponsor this channel
00:55to get me to wear a high-quality black t-shirt with a subtle little bit of detailing on it.
01:00But here we are, and you can watch all the remaining games in the tournament, all one of them, as
01:05well as every single previous game, all 62 of them, absolutely free by clicking the link in the description.
01:11Thanks DAZN!
01:12Now this performance from this PSG team, I genuinely think, could have been 6 or 7-0 incredibly easily, but
01:19had to settle for 4, and this was the team that did that.
01:22Now look, I am not one of those internet football people that is desperate to look super intelligent and correct
01:28all the time.
01:29However, I did literally say to my flatmate, in the opening three minutes of this game, PSG are going to
01:36absolutely do these.
01:38And that is because in those three minutes, we went from this off-the-ball structure to this off-the
01:45-ball structure.
01:45Now just forget about, like, pressing and shapes and structures and tactics and all of that.
01:50I'm not even talking about what they were trying to do.
01:52Just look at the difference in the body language between these two teams.
01:57Every single PSG player looks like a 100m sprinter on a set of starting blocks, and every single Real Madrid
02:05player looks like a dad in a park, just making sure the little-in stays about where they can see
02:12them.
02:12And sure enough, the entire tale of this game was PSG robbing Madrid of the ball by not letting them
02:18have any time of it.
02:19And, shoe on the other foot, PSG moving Real Madrid around with consummate ease so they can play right through
02:27the middle of them.
02:28Like, goals one and two just explain that pretty neatly.
02:30Like, for the first one, you've got Asensio dawdling on the ball in his own box, and Dembele just smelling
02:37blood and going and taking it off him.
02:38You can't park there, mate.
02:40And the second is Antonio Rudiger.
02:44Of all people, somehow not grasping how little time Dembele's going to give him, doing this weird sort of left
02:51-on-to-right-foot whiff kick,
02:52and Dembele taking it off him, steaming through, and scoring one of the easiest goals you'll ever get.
02:57But if you want this, the whole problem entirely in 4K, right?
03:02Wind back to the build-up of that third goal.
03:05Because, fucking hell.
03:08Madrid are not doing what you would call an intense press here, which is absolutely fine.
03:13You don't necessarily have to do that.
03:15They're looking to stop the passes through the middle into the central space.
03:19That's a perfectly valid approach.
03:21And maybe doing that, they'll force PSG long, they'll force him to make a mistake.
03:24And Vinicius Jr. looks, physically looks, at the player in space here.
03:30So he definitely knows he's there.
03:32He does absolutely nothing to stop the pass going into him.
03:38Like, I'm not being hysterical here.
03:39Like, that ball must pass about a yard away from his foot.
03:43And there is no reaction, there is no reflex whatsoever to try and cut it out.
03:48It's mad.
03:49But astoundingly, Real Madrid actually get a bit of a break here because this pass is miscontrolled.
03:55And with the pressure they've got from behind, he panics and just plays a loose pass back towards his own
04:02goal.
04:02And this is where any team in the world, regardless of how much you're trying to press,
04:06if you are in the opposition's third when this is happening, that is the moment when you all have to
04:12jump as a unit.
04:14People talk about pressing triggers, right?
04:16Like some player getting it on his weak foot or facing in a weird direction.
04:19A miscontrolled pass that's loosely played back into the box, that is a universal pressing trigger for everyone.
04:27You are almost never going to get a better chance, especially against PSG, to force a mistake in an important
04:33area than a pass like this.
04:35And Tushimeni and Goula do their jobs.
04:38They get tight behind the two central midfielders, but it's Vinicius who has to apply pressure to Donnarumma here
04:44while simultaneously closing off this pass by, like, curving his run between the two.
04:50You see that every week in the Premier League.
04:52At the same time, Mbappe has to rush Mokinos to take him out of the equation.
04:56And neither of them so much as break into a jog.
05:03I do not support Real Madrid.
05:04I had no dog in this fight whatsoever.
05:07And I was hooting and hollering at the TV at this moment last night, shouting,
05:13what are you doing, lads?
05:15Run!
05:16Like, genuinely, when those two see two goals in the first half exclusively from just closing down a pass
05:23and taking the ball off somebody, what goes through their head when they see that?
05:27Are they both just like, ah, it's weird.
05:31Anyway, PSG still on out of the woods here.
05:33Hakimi is the only realistic outball.
05:35But this is a long pass that you have to make right onto the touchline fairly quickly.
05:41And it's only an easy thing to do if the goalkeeper isn't under any pressure, which he's not.
05:46And Hakimi has time as well as the space to get that under control.
05:50Now, Bellingham does do his job here.
05:52He jumps up to put the pressure on Hakimi, but there is just way, way too much ground for him
05:58to cover.
05:59And the defender is able to get turned.
06:01And, oh, would you look at that?
06:04Ah, it was a trick.
06:05It was a ruse by drawing Tushimeni and Garcia onto the two central midfielders here,
06:10who've gone really deep, really suspiciously close to their own centre-backs,
06:14almost like they didn't even want the ball in the first place.
06:17It's allowed Vitinha, I think that is, to have all this space behind them.
06:23Do you see now what it is they've done?
06:25They've kept the ball in the centre and knocked it around to invite
06:27all those central players from Real Madrid to shuffle up eventually.
06:31And then they've gone wide and then into the gap behind them.
06:35It is master, masterful manipulation.
06:38They then play the most egregious one-two you've ever seen.
06:42And that's it.
06:43Their belly is also dropped away from the centre-backs.
06:45There's another, frankly, insultingly easy one-two plate.
06:49And Hakimi is now in.
06:51They have gone from their own goalkeeper receiving a loose ball
06:54that should have been the trigger to really put the squeeze on them
06:58to a three versus one in the final third of the pitch.
07:04And it was not hard to do.
07:07Now, the thing is, right, I am a card-carrying,
07:10big-time, Xabi Alonso, super-manager, uh, fan.
07:14I think he's excellent.
07:15And yeah, the decision last night to make these alterations
07:18in the wake of Trent Alexander-Arnold's injury,
07:20to sort of go with, like, a 4-3-1-2,
07:23or sort of, like, a weirdly inverted 4-3-3,
07:25just played right into PSG's hands.
07:29It meant that rather than having Tushimeni drop in between the two centre-backs,
07:32he now had to be the central midfielder that pushed up with Garcia
07:36to give them sort of a flat four across this in the press.
07:40And that then leaves you with Bellingham on the left and Goula on the right.
07:43And for all their obvious qualities on the ball,
07:45the two players who are really ill-suited to be getting dragged out of central areas
07:49to go chasing full-backs around.
07:52Like, go back to that little Hakimi moment in the previous goal.
07:56Bellingham is absolutely miles away from him there,
07:58not because he's bad at his job,
08:00but because he's not playing on the left-hand side.
08:02He's playing left-central midfield,
08:05which is still quite central and gives him loads of ground to cover
08:08if he wants to apply that pressure.
08:11And then you factor in just how good Nuno Mendes is on the left,
08:14how good Svartis-Gellia is,
08:15Dwey will bring a Barcola off the bench if they want to.
08:18PSG's greatest strength,
08:20despite how good these central midfielders are,
08:22is actually how they attack in wide areas.
08:25And Real Madrid's system left the wide areas wide open.
08:29Like, little just case in point just to wrap all this up.
08:31Right, look where Nuno Mendes is at the very start of this move.
08:35He's not a threat.
08:37Just a chill guy in the back line.
08:39You haven't got to worry about him.
08:40But a few seconds later,
08:41Vitinha has dropped in at left-back to draw players towards him
08:44and Ruiz and Neves move towards their own central defenders.
08:49Eh, where have we seen that before?
08:51To pull Real Madrid's sort of pressing structure,
08:54I hesitate to call it that,
08:55towards them and bang.
08:58Mendes has just walked into this much space
09:01in front of Real Madrid's defence
09:03and, fun bonus moment that you may miss here,
09:07look at the other side of the pitch.
09:09They could just as easily have found Hakimi,
09:11who is in absolute fucking acres as well.
09:15PSG are the world heavyweight champions right now
09:18of manipulating the opposition press.
09:20And the only way you can offset that,
09:23if you're playing them,
09:24is having everyone work really hard off the ball.
09:27So even when they do move around,
09:29you're still going to make life difficult for them
09:31when they try and pass through you.
09:32But Real Madrid was simultaneously getting suckered
09:37left, right and centre of the pitch
09:39and then shrugging their shoulders and going,
09:41oh well, they've done us again.
09:44Like, just to sum the entire thing up,
09:45it's the 64th game of PSG season.
09:49It is like a million degrees in New Jersey.
09:52They are 3-0 up with a couple of minutes left.
09:56And where does the fourth goal come from?
09:58Hakimi making a long, busting run
10:00to get a ball over the top
10:03and then getting joined by a number of other players
10:06who are all like, oh yeah, I want to score as well.
10:08I'm not being over the top here, right?
10:10I think Real Madrid were lucky to get nil in this game.
10:14That even flattered them.
10:16So yes, just to bury this in the context
10:18that the majority of our audience
10:19are Premier League football fans,
10:23I would not want to be Chelsea
10:24is what my feelings are.
10:27I would not want to play that team now or ever
10:31and especially in the bacon hot sun.
10:34I think best of luck to them
10:36but also they might have a really bad time.
10:39But hey, I mean also, might not,
10:41stranger things have happened
10:42and whatever the result is in that game,
10:43we will be right here on ACFC
10:45to tell you how it all went down
10:47because it's a reasonably major cup final.
10:50It is.
10:51So why not subscribe to us here at ACFC?
10:54You can follow me across all the social media,
10:55at Evan Cleary, CLE.
10:56Or why it has dawned on me
10:58that the instruction I failed to give,
11:00which is important for YouTube,
11:01is the notifications bell.
11:03I always forget,
11:04I forget that's a thing
11:05because I don't really ever think about it too much.
11:07But if you press the notifications bell,
11:09then it'll tell you when the videos are out.
11:11And the reason I mention this
11:12is because a very nice man stopped me on the tube
11:14and was like,
11:15bro, where's the Yokka Rez video?
11:17Awesome.
11:18I was like, I've done it.
11:19It's already out.
11:20He's like, oh, I missed that.
11:22Oh, so if you press the bell,
11:23you won't miss the stuff
11:24if that's your jam.
11:26Anyway, thank you very much.
11:26I'm droning on you.
11:27Thank you very much for watching.
11:29ACFC.
11:30Well done, PSG.
11:31That all rhymes.
11:33I've been me
11:33and I'll see you latey.
11:38Nah, it doesn't work.
11:38Bye.
11:39Bye.
11:40Bye.
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