- 4 hours ago
PSG 5-4 Bayern Munich will go down in history as one of the Champions League’s most exciting ever games. But with both sides getting as much criticism for their defending as they are praise for their attacking, why did neither of them change their approach as the goals flowed. Adam Clery looks at why both Vincent Kompany and Luis Enrique knew *exactly* what they were doing, and the openness of their teams was the whole point.
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00:00Right, hello everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football channel and there is simply no point me having this channel,
00:06is there, if I don't talk about that game.
00:09Bayern Munich vs PSG, right, in this era where you're told everything is about risk management, marginal gains, out of
00:17possession, attritional misery,
00:19it might actually be the most entertaining game in the Champions League's history ever.
00:25So today we are going to have a look at why that game was the way it was and more
00:30importantly, right, just come here a second, right, why it had nothing to do with bad defending.
00:39Alright, moments like this that look horrendous in a freeze frame were all part of the plan for both teams.
00:47I'm going to show you why.
00:52Now of course a reminder that ACFC is proudly brought to you by our investment pals at Trading212, hence Tedga
00:59Davids here, I'm getting better at coming up with those, we'll hear more from them in a bit,
01:03but first, right, just look at these two teams.
01:06And what we thought we were going to get with these two teams was genuinely a chess-like tactical battle
01:12for the ages.
01:13Luis Enrique's defending champions vs. Vincent Kompany's all-conquering probable favourites was for a place in the Champions League final,
01:23sure,
01:23but it was also more about which of the two contrasting footballing philosophies was going to be the gold standard
01:31going forward.
01:32Like it was meant to be like meta-defining or agenda-setting, and I think probably it has been, just
01:40not in either of the two ways anybody expected.
01:43And that's because every single goal more or less required some sort of expressive moment of individual brilliance that had
01:52very little to do with the system.
01:55So just to start with, what are those two contrasting philosophies we're expecting to see here?
02:00Well, they were rotational football and man-to-man football.
02:05And the thing is, if you've watched either PSG or Bayern this season, you'll already know that both of these
02:10teams do both of these things.
02:13PSG are the masters of rotations, but you can see here in the first minute, they're locking on man-for
02:19-man.
02:20That's Hikini, the right-back, chasing all the way into the centre of the pitch.
02:24And likewise, Bayern, who are built on man-to-man pressing, still have the rotations between Kane and the rest
02:31of the forwards as the basis of their entire approach.
02:34Like, sir, you are the centre-forward. Why are you winning a free kick as a full-back in open
02:39play?
02:40So it was never going to be like light versus dark, good versus evil, Charmander versus Squirtle.
02:46They both know each other's moves. It's just the extent to which they each rely on one of those, respectively.
02:54Like, they're both packing all of the same toys. It's just which ones do they prefer to use. That's what
03:00we're talking about here.
03:01So like five or six minutes in, PSG get their first chance to really build out from the back and
03:06watch the extent to which Bayern lock on and chase them around.
03:11Like, I'll just highlight Jonathan Tarr here, who is a centre-back. He comes this far forward to shadow Douay.
03:18So defensive shape doesn't really matter to Bayern. It's not about holding lines or holding formations.
03:24It is an almost NBA style of individual responsibility designed to disrupt the opposition's play.
03:31But the thing is, PSG do not do rotations in the way you'd normally think of them,
03:37where, like, a player will drop a little bit deeper to pull a player out of position so someone can
03:41get into the small bit of space that creates.
03:44What they'll do, as you can see quite literally here, is the attackers will just sit in defensive positions
03:51so Mendes and Hakimi can just go and stand at the very top end of the pitch.
03:57And, like, what do you do in that situation there? Do you track that?
04:01Do you ask your forward to go all the way back into his own defensive line just because Hakimi has,
04:08like,
04:08it stretches man-for-man philosophies to their absolute limit.
04:12But the thing is, right, this obvious clash of styles that we all thought we were going to get,
04:17it absolutely was present, but it was not at all what this game was about.
04:24And I'm going to show you now what it was.
04:27This right here is all of the successful dribbles, right, from Arsenal versus Manchester City last weekend.
04:36Basically, every single time a player in that game got the ball and thought,
04:40do you know what, right, I'm amazing at football, I'm off me, I've got nuts the size of novelty watermelons,
04:47I'm going to make something happen.
04:49But they only managed to make something happen like that 12 times in about 97 minutes.
04:56And out of all of these, I don't know if you can tell, only, like, three of them belong to
05:01Arsenal.
05:01But now, let's just have a look at the same stats for PSG versus Bayern, right?
05:07These are all the successful dribbles in that match, and immediately, there is almost three times as many.
05:15I'd say they're pretty evenly spread between both teams.
05:17There's a lot of them happening in really dangerous areas of the pitch.
05:21And if we just add to this as well, the total number of attempted dribbles as well.
05:27So not just the successful ones.
05:28Every time someone tried to make something happen, that is absolutely staggering.
05:36Like, I can't see them all here.
05:38They're not real for me.
05:39But there's, like, just over 70 of them across this game.
05:45Which means that somebody, again, had that feeling of wanting to just make something happen about once every 80 seconds.
05:54Like, I'm obviously not very good at maths.
05:56That's why I do this for a job.
05:58But I think that's about right.
05:59And what you're looking at with this graph, right, is just a representation of freedom.
06:06Like, these are two teams who absolutely dominate their own domestic leagues.
06:12Like, arguably more than any other teams in Europe do.
06:16Who, every single week, come up against sides who pack players on the edge of the box.
06:20Who keep 8, 9, 10 lads behind the ball.
06:24Who almost never have proper space to play in.
06:27Two teams who pretty much always commit 8 or 9 players to every single attack.
06:32Because there's just no real danger in them doing so.
06:36And now, they're suddenly receiving passes on the halfway line with this much space.
06:42And situations like that one almost never happen for PSG or Bayern.
06:48And yet, in this game, they were happening every single time they moved the ball forward.
06:53And I can't show you another graph.
06:56I can't hit you with a load of stats on this one.
06:59Because what this amount of freedom gave us was repeated moments of just scarcely believable individual brilliance.
07:08And I'm not going to go through all nine goals either.
07:11Because I'm sure we've all got stuff to do today.
07:14But for me, the most notable highlights were thus.
07:17Mendes fires the ball into Dewey and he drops off the forward line.
07:21And just watch, really slowly, Gavart Skellier here, man.
07:25He feigns to go, which scares Stanisic.
07:28Then he cuts back to bait him in, which he does.
07:31And then he bursts into the space.
07:34And from there, his finish is absolutely unerring.
07:37Because unlike most games he has to play while wearing that shirt,
07:41he does not get to the edge of the box and find himself being doubled up on.
07:46Because that's the thing about defending man for man, isn't it?
07:49It's just another way of saying 1v1.
07:53And attackers do love that.
07:55Then after that, Michael Alise gets the ball in this pocket somehow,
07:58which again, never usually exists for him.
08:00And instead of trying to shift it out wide,
08:02just takes players on.
08:04He weaves through the crowd.
08:06And he proves that there is not a no-blasties rule in the Champions League.
08:12Oh, but this one, though, this was my personal favourite.
08:16You've got Dewey, who you'd expect,
08:18and Nevers, who maybe you wouldn't,
08:20drop to make this space for Hakimi to overlap,
08:24which is obviously what he really, really likes to do.
08:28But the thing is, this PSG team are on just such a level of transient understanding
08:33that two different players, Zayah Emery and Dembele,
08:38just know that they can leave this ball in this position
08:42because Vartoskelia will be steamrollering in at the back post
08:46to do something with it.
08:49It's just a joy to watch.
08:51And then, of course, Harry Kane, centre-forward, loves to drop, doesn't he?
08:55I'm just going to quickly show you his heat map from this game
09:00because it's, um, that's absurd.
09:03He's got a bit of box threat, which obviously you'd expect,
09:06but he's also playing as the number 10, which he does quite like to do.
09:09But it's also, yeah, he's getting a bit chalk on his boots.
09:12He's sort of left and right wing when he needs to be.
09:15He's able to drop deeper than some Radiohead lyrics.
09:19And also, just for a laugh, he appears to be playing at fullback as well.
09:23That is a man who has never known freedom like it.
09:26And what he can do with that, of course, is he can get off his marker
09:29and have all the time in the world, relatively speaking,
09:32to play this pass, which is, uh, extraordinary.
09:36Which, of course, so is the touch and so was the finish
09:39and so, uh, indeed was the game.
09:42And even, just for extra funsies that I hope Archie, uh, puts in a clip,
09:45I saw a few people being like,
09:46well, at least, you know, thank God there was a goal from a set piece.
09:50We couldn't have enjoyed it if there wasn't a corner.
09:52Do you remember where the corner comes from?
09:54He tries to take on three defenders and does and nearly scores.
09:59Even, even the set piece goal, even the set piece goal
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12:00And you have seen, or you will see, right, a lot of people saying that the defending in this game
12:07is actually the real story.
12:09It was so exciting because the defending was so poor.
12:12I think I saw Wayne Rooney last night on the Amazon stream calling it absolutely criminal, right?
12:18And if I may be so bold, I would say that is quite a fundamental misunderstanding of what was happening
12:27here.
12:27Prior to conceding the first goal, right, buying here, you can see they are set in a low block.
12:34And it just, it didn't matter.
12:36PSG sliced through them anyway and then scored a minute later.
12:40And I think, honestly, right, if you go and ask Vincent Kompany or you go and ask Luis Enrique,
12:45they'll tell you, like, well, yeah, of course, there's no point sitting loads of men behind the ball
12:50or trying to block off the space because your opponents are so good, they're just going to score anyway.
12:56So the only difference is by being defensive, you'll have sacrificed your own goal threat for no reason.
13:02Like, if you willingly decide to concede, like, momentum or territory or possession in a fixture like this,
13:10you'll never get it back.
13:11Like, it's absolute suicide to play defensively because if you go back in like this too often,
13:18you'll simply never get back out.
13:20And so instead, they both just went for it.
13:23Like, they chose to leave players further up the pitch and leave themselves a little bit more exposed at the
13:28back
13:28to make sure they always had attacking threat.
13:32Like, you have to strike a balance.
13:33You have to pick where you're going to put your priorities.
13:36And they both decided to do it in the opposition's half.
13:40And given that the tie is now finally poised with only one goal in it,
13:44they both scored loads of goals, it worked.
13:47Like, this might have looked like chaos and madness and the two teams just couldn't be bothered defending.
13:53But the game plans for both of these sides, you'd argue, worked really well.
13:59So, yes, that's why it feels like it was the best game you've seen in ages because it was.
14:04It's very rare for two managers, especially of clubs this size, to both just decide,
14:10do you know what?
14:10Let's not worry about restricting the opposition.
14:13Let's just fully focus on what we can do.
14:16Like, so much of strategy and tactics and game plans and even transfers and recruitment and all of this
14:21is designed to limit the opposition, to marginalise games.
14:25And here are two teams, presumably because they don't have to worry about that too much in their own domestic
14:30leagues,
14:31just thinking, fuck it.
14:35And that's the video.
14:36So, if you have enjoyed this and you are new here, please do consider subscribing to us at the Adam
14:40Cleary Football Channel.
14:41And if you're not, then we love you anyway.
14:43Please let us know what you thought of the game in the comments down below.
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15:06And a final reminder that we are now two and a half weeks away from me doing the Hackney Half
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15:36And all donations are massively, massively appreciated.
15:38But until next time, my friends, from me and what did I call you at the start?
15:44Ted would share...
15:45I can't remember.
15:46Yeah, bye.
15:47My head's still spinning.
15:48What a game.
15:50I'm going to get another one.
15:51They should just give the trophy to whoever wins that, in my opinion.
15:54No offence, Arsenal Atleti.
15:58No offence, Arsenal Atleti.
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