1st Game Under Setién : What Changed ?
Some observations about the Barça vs Granada game (1-0 win) and Quique Setién's new tactical system & strategy. In no particular order.
First of all, I obviously don't believe this single game gives an idea of everything Setién has in mind for Barça. It's just a tiny sample. The tactical system & line-up will probably change in the future.
But we've already seen some general guidelines that will probably be maintained.
Note : if you noticed something else, don't hesitate to mention it in the comments section.
1/ This tweet is quite accurate. Barça played a kind of 352 in attacking phase. Turned into 442 in defensive phase.
https://twitter.com/JMftbl/status/1218990381712408576?s=19
But it wasn't as clear as the image would make you think. It's rather close to the asymmetrical system used by Valverde in his 1st year, where Dembélé was wide on the right (Fati here), Suárez & Messi in the center (Griezmann & Messi here), while Alba had the whole left wing for him since Iniesta (Rakitic here) tucked inside.
2/ The big difference is Roberto playing as 3rd center back in attacking phase instead of bombing forward.
I always struggled to imagine this side playing a back 3 since there was no solid right-footed center back to operate on the right side (Piqué is too slow to operate on wide areas). I thought maybe Semedo could be that man. A role where you have limited attacking responsibilities and mostly have to man-mark, cover big spaces, counter-press & block counters seemed made for him.
But Setién favored Sergi Roberto for this role, showing that on the ball skills of the defenders were more important to him (same reason he chose Umtiti rather than Lenglet I guess).
As said previously, as long as Setién tries new things, I'm all for it. I hope the "Roberto as fake CB" experiment works.
3/ When you play with only 1 wide player on each side (which means no overlapping), they'd better be super skilled in 1v1. Unless you create the necessary conditions for underlapping, as City does & Barça did in a couple games.
Fati did very well in this aspect. This will probably be Dembélé's role/task once fit to play. But I'm not sure it suits Alba to start from such a high positioning. He needs movements in front of him to create space for his runs & players to combine with (and let's be honest, Rakitic is no Iniesta). I suppose that's why 1 of the 2 forwards (Griezmann) operated more in the left half-space rather than a centered position.
4/ Another big difference was the focus on interior combinations rather than quickly playing it wide.
Again, in a system with only 1 man per wing, it's better to combine close & overload an area & attract pressure before switching the play wide, in order to put the winger in advantageous 1v1 situations.
Now the positioning of the 5 players on the central lane (3 midfielders & 2 forwards) was a bit anarchic in my opinion. Often crowding the same zones & stepping on each other's areas. Which made the passing less fluid. So I guess this aspect (interior combinations) will be improved once the positioning of the 5 mentioned players becomes more accurate.
5/ I personally never liked to have Messi playing as "fake RW" (a post here with all the arguments). A free GOAT is a better GOAT.
Now he still needs advanced players to combine with. So freeing Griezmann from the wing (get him closer to Messi) and playing Vidal as box-to-box midfielder (switching positions with Messi) was an excellent move. The goal scored by Messi is a perfect example of what I mean :
https://youtu.be/MipusJJ00HM
6/ Another change is the quality of the counter-pressing.
I expected it to improve for the obvious reason that, without Suárez (whose pressing activity is often inconsistent), Barça has 1 more defensively active player. But Setién made it even more intense by overcrowding the central areas. Despite ball possession being sometimes slow and apparently sterile, all those passes meant the block was more compact and the players were closer to launch the counter-pressing once the ball was lost.
The multiple passes (1005, a breaking record) & the intensity of the counter-pressing is what took Barça to an amazing 82% rate of ball possession. And I'm mentally ready to accept long spells of fruitless ball possession with limited verticalization if that's the price to pay for defensive stability.
7/ Big change in Busquets' positioning who played higher on the pitch.
During build-up, the back 3 freed him from having to drop deep (as he's used to do, between center backs) and enabled him to impact the game from a more advanced position. I don't have the exact statistic, but I don't remember the last time there were as many combinations between Busquets & Messi as yesterday.
This new positioning also helped take advantage of Busquets best skill (counter-pressing, aka "defending by going forward") WHILE still having 3 men behind him in case Barça fails to recover the ball.
(Update : Confirmed!Busquets-Messi was the most used combination. Screenshot via @TheSinglePivot)
8/ There was a lot of talk about attacking fútbol since Setién was appointed. But I think his best contribution is defensive stability. Only he's used *attacking tools* to reach this goal.
I have lots of questions about the future : how will he balance continuous ball possession with attacking threat? Will Suárez' absence be detrimental against deeper blocks? How will Setién react when it'll happen? Is Roberto's new position a temporary solution or a long-term choice ? Will Vidal, a key tool in this system, be dropped once De Jong & Arthur are back? Will this new strategy prove to be as effective against top clubs?
I'm quite excited and curious to see what comes next.
Visca Barça 💪🏽🔵🔴
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