Anatomy Of A Fall
Analysis of the first 30 minutes of the FC Barcelona vs PSG UCL game. Trying to understand what led to Araujo’s misplaced pass and subsequent red card. Using screenshots & short videos.
In the following, I’d like to discuss the first 30 minutes of the FC Barcelona vs PSG UCL game. Everything that happened before the moment that marked the tie : Araujo’s misplaced pass and subsequent red card.
The goal here is to :
- understand what happened and what led to that situation.
- discuss if/how it could have been avoided.
- spot other interesting insights that may explain the loss.
I will be sharing screenshots & short videos, as if we were watching the game live. I will comment each one individually, but you will quickly notice some patterns emerging.
PSG’s MAIN PLAN
This is more or less how PSG organized their high press. Their plan :
Mbappé focused on Cubarsí (and Ter Stegen in 2nd instance).
Barcola closing the passing lane towards Koundé while slowly making an inside run towards Araujo as the latter advances.
ANATOMY OF A FALL
1:00 : First minute and Araujo realizes that no-one is pressing him : he’s left unmarked, with freedom to advance, during Barça's build-up.
1:21 Rushing the build-up. Even though it wasn’t necessary. It’s PSG who should be taking risks, not Barça ! Instead, we quickly moved the ball towards Araujo, putting him further under the spot and facilitating Luis Enrique and PSG’s plan.
4:27 : With Pedri & Frenkie perfectly marked by Fabian & Warren, we often tried to reach a pivot in the following line (Lewa & Gundo) who could then play with a 3rd man.
Lewandowski was surprisingly able to find Yamal a couple times with 1-touch passes. But whenever he was marked tighter, I felt that Pedri, Frenkie & Gundo were too slow to make themselves available for a pass (as you will see in several visuals).
But in any case, the free man was Koundé. Because it’s Barcola who’s leaving his man (when doing that inside run from the left wing to press Araujo). So, most of the time, it’s Koundé we were supposed to reach.
4:30 : And we did so pretty well at times (see Gundogan here). Only Koundé’s technical performance was subpar. Inaccurate ball controls, unable to quickly carry the ball forward… which meant any tiny spatial or temporal advantage we gained was quickly wasted by Koundé. Then the ball would be played back to Sisyphus sorry to Araujo.
After the 10th minute : From here on, Ter Stegen took on more responsibilities. Since Barcola occupied an intermediary position between Araujo & Koundé, Ter Stegen started playing long passes towards the latter. As you will see, sometimes it worked, sometimes not so.
14:30 : Ter Stegen to Koundé, a misplaced pass.
Regardless of its outcome : was it necessary to rush the pass and take these risks ? IMHO we should have kept our cool and built in a slower manner. You can already notice that, as soon as Ter Stegen started to be involved, Mbappé would sometimes leave Cubarsi to press him. We automatically had a 2nd free man now.
What must be going through Araujo’s mind at this moment of the game ? He was targeted by PSG as the weak link, then he misplaced a couple of passes (further confirming their assessment) and now his teammates are flat out avoiding passing to him whenever possible. It’s not an easy spot to be in, and doubts may start piling up if one isn’t mentally strong.
16:02 There were regular sequences of disorganized and unnecessary high pressing.
You have a 2 goal advantage in a 2nd UCL leg tie and you’re pressing like it’s the 90th minute and you need to score ? Why would you waste so much energy so early on ? Why would you press in numerical inferiority (low probability of success) against a top tream that’ll easily bypass it. Be strategic. Play your cards right.
It’s even more annoying considering that one of the reasons behind our positive performances these last 2 months was : our acceptance that we are too disorganized to press high all the time, so we started to successfully defend in a mid-block more often. IMHO we chose the wrong moment and rival to take risks.
17:26 Maybe Araujo started to panick… Again : what is the point of playing forward so quickly ? why not passing it back to Ter Stegen here and force PSG to show their cards ?
18:02 Another useless and disorganized high press. 4 vs 5 + goalkeeper. Was obviously easily bypassed.
18:55 At this point of the game, we’ve been chasing the ball for most of the time. And whenever we recovered the ball, we played very direct attacks. We never attempted to keep ball possession for more than 30 seconds.
Again, this is the UCL, you have to be smart and think about unexpected adversities. I bet they wished they had saved some energy for the 2nd half when they were 1 man down and had to cover even more ground.
20:33 Again Ter Stegen to Koundé. A good pass but, as mentioned earlier, Koundé wasn’t on a good day.
23:05 Another rushed attack right after ball recovery. Instead of staying calm, keeping the ball, so that everyone could breathe & recover some energy.
24:50 Another rushed and misplaced long pass. There was absolutely no need for it. It’s puzzling why 3 players (Ter Stegen, Araujo & Cubarsi) didn’t opt for short passes when pressed by a single opponent (Mbappé) :
26:11 By now you probably know the drill. It’s Sisyphus again.
Araujo is an average passer. Who had to deal with a complex situation. And when an average passer is repeatedly thrust into the same complex situation, disaster may inevitably strike…
THE FALL !
Our inability to retain ball possession in PSG’s half forced us to either rush our attacks or constantly pass back, often exposing Araujo and facilitating their plan.
28:00 Look how and where the sequence leading to the red card started.
DID WE HAVE ALTERNATIVES ?
- Slower rhythm & focus on Ter Stegen :
As you saw in most of the previous clips, we often rushed our build-up. Only 1 or 2 touches then we got the ball to Araujo and put him in that weird spot. Or played long passes to isolated players.
We didn’t exploit the fact that we had a 2-goal advantage. They press ? Play with Ter Stegen. Be patient, attract them. At some point someone would have to press Ter Stegen, and that’s when we gain numerical superiority.
Some of the visuals shown above proved that, whenever we did that, we were indeed able to create better contexts to play forward. I wonder why we didn’t do this systematically.
- Pushing Koundé further forward during build-up :
That way his marker, Barcola, would be positioned around the halfway line during Barça’s build-up. This would have 2 consequences :
1/ in case of a turnover, at least you pushed 2 of PSG’s 3 fast & technical forwards very far from your box. I’d rather have Fabian or Warren run at Araujo than Barcola or Dembélé.
2/ you increase the distance between Araujo & Barcola, and make the latter’s inside run to press Araujo more difficult.
If you also drop Frenkie deeper to attract 1 of PSG’s midfielders, you would also have cleared Araujo’s path to progress forward. This was attempted only once :
CORNER TAKEN QUICKLY
PSG’s 2nd goal (Vitinha) came after a classic “corner taken quickly” and a cutback.
Let’s revisit some of the corner kicks before that goal. Half of them were played short & quickly and Barça players were late to react :
Here is PSG’s first corner kick in the 2nd half, 5 minutes before Vitinha’s goal. Based on this, it seems Lewandowski’s the one who should have rushed forward to block Vitinha’s shot in that goal.
Here, Lewandowski forced Vitinha to cross instead of shooting :
And this below is the corner that led to Vitinha’s goal.
- To be fair, it'd be harsh to criticize Lewandowski here. With 1 man down, our striker had to perform 2 jobs : be the free man defending the 1st post + block shots from the edge of the area in case of a cutback.
- We also have to admire Luis Enrique’s strategy here : by first playing it short in order to drag 3 men wide, while the other Barça players are attracted to the far post, he clears the edge of the box for the shooter.
SOME OBSERVATIONS
Obviously, at this level of the competition and against such a solid opponent, playing with 10 men significantly reduces your probabilities of winning. But it doesn't necessarily reduce them to zero… There are several examples of teams playing in numerical inferiority yet still staying solid, efficiently closing down spaces in a deep block and making it difficult for the opponent to score.
Instead (and even though we surprisingly were still able to create a couple of clear chances), I feel the team panicked excessively when out of possession.In a competition like the UCL, you can't go far without a clear plan for how to react to every type of adversity.
Down to 10 men ? We have a plan for that !
My technically weakest player is unmarked in build-up (one of the oldest tricks in the book) ? We have a plan for that !
You push your defense until the halfway line ? I have a way to punis… wait, no, we don’t…This game configuration also showed us how Barça not having fast & smart off the ball runners in attack impacts its overall strategy. Because our opponents are aware of our incapacity to threaten the back of their defense, it empowers them to push their lines higher and compress space in midfield, further limiting our short passing options
Lastly, I believe the players weren't in the right mindset for this game : as you saw, everything was rushed, there was too much excitement. We played as if every minute was the 90th minute. We didn't transmit the calmness of a team that has 2-goal advantage and all the cards in its hands. In some way, Araujo & Xavi’s red cards are a testament to this.
(45+3th minute : it’s added-time, we’re down to 10, we need to reach half-time without conceding a 2nd goal. To rest and come back stronger. So no need to take risks, right ? We just pass back to Ter Stegen, right ?)
(49th minute : Koundé recovers the ball, he’s not pressed, 3 free midfielders available for a short pass. Lewandowski is upfront surrounded by 3 guys. You pass the ball to the midfilders, right ? Riiiiight ?)
CONCLUSION
This game showed the limits of both team and coach at the elite european level. Faced with a storm of challenges and tactical traps, Barça showed a lack of maturity : it self-sabotaged and precipitated its own downfall.
The UCL decided that our place was among the 8 best teams in Europe but not among the 4 best ones. And, to be honest, I’d say that’s a fair assessment of this team’s level.
Thank you for reading. Feel free to leave your feedback in the comments section below. You can also follow me on Twitter 📱 and Youtube 📺.
Visca el Barça 👊🏾🔵🔴
Absolutely loved reading this! Made similar observations while watching the game; this is why imho, Xavi is why we lost that game.
Another painful observation is that we didn’t adopt an approach (game model) that maximizes our midfielders (Pedri, Gundo and De Jong); simply put, these guys were reduced to runners for most of the game.
I firmly believe we need another coach to help us mature to the next level.