Last night the Uruguayan selection was able to win at "La Bombonera" against the World Champions team of Argentina. It was a huge display for the "La Celeste" who won 2-0 against a team that never conceded a goal after the World Cup final played almost one year ago.
Of course huge credit for this performance must be given to Marcelo Bielsa, who took care of the Uruguay national team after last World Cup. In this article we are going to analyse some tactical choices who demonstrate the tactical abilities of the coach born in Rosario.
DUTIES INSTEAD OF ROLES: THE DEFENSIVE LINE
First point of this analysis is related to the players deployed by Bielsa to compose the defensive line of Uruguay. And everybody noted the decision of the Argentinian coach to use Mathias Oliveira as a centre-back paired with Caceres, while Araujo and Vina was chosen as full-backs.
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| Source: Sofascore |
The Napoli player never used to play as center-back in his career (or, at least, in the last years of his career). This is a proof on how Bielsa needs players to be ready to perform some duties with no importance of the position on the field. The reason behind using Oliveira as centre-back was due to the shape of Argentina in the attacking phase.
We are aware of the fact that Bielsa's strategy without the ball is to have players having as reference their opponent in a man-to-man approach. This approach is much more visible when the opponent's team is in the build-up or progression phase. In this example we can understand why Oliveira was deployed as center-back. His task was to follow Messi while Vina - the left-back who started the game - was following Molina. In this way is also difficult to say that Oliveira was used as centre-back, cause under Bielsa the defensive line does not have a specific shape as the team is oriented to challenge the opponent's attacking shape. An other interesting point is that, with a specific shape, the man deployed as sweeper (or Libero as we use to call it in Italy) should be one of the defender. In this case this duty is given to Ugarte, nominally deployed as holding midfielder, but who had the duty to provide coverage instead of man-marking an Argentinian midfielder, duty that was given to Valverde and de la Cruz. Therefore, with Vina assigned to Molina, Oliveira had to shift on the left to mark the player occupying the space behind Sassuolo's player.
In the second half Scaloni decided to put in Di Maria and Lautaro Martinez and removing one midfielder (Mac Allister) and Nico Gonzalez. Bielsa responded by removing Vina replacing him with Gimenez in order to assign Oliveira to Di Maria, Caceres to Messi, Gimenez to Lautaro and Araujo to Julian Alvarez. In this example the former Juventus defender is tracking and duelling with Messi without considering the shape of the defensive line. Ugarte was still there to give coverage. This is typical of Bielsa's way of defending. No roles, functions.
MANIPULATION OF ARGENTINA'S DEFENSIVE SHAPE
Also with the ball there was a clear scope in Bielsa strategy and it worked. The objective was to use the high defensive line used by Scaloni to apply a strategy focused on direct attack. And to give execution to this strategy Bielsa deployed his players in order to allow them to execute a function.
Looking at the Uruguay shape during the build-up we can understand which was the solution Bielsa was looking for. Valverde stepped down on the right of Caceres allowing Oliveira to move on the left creating a three-players line while Araujo and Vina maintained the width in order to invite the Argentinian midfielders to open up and create space centrally. In this example the bell is on Oliveira's feet while we can see attacking players occupying the five positional channels with the movement of Vina that attract De Paul opening space to a vertical pass in the left half-space creating positional superiority. This situation was often used by Uruguay to let Oliveira himself to carry the ball on the left and creating combinations by overloading the left side and then finding the free man on the opposite side. Incidentally this overload created the situation who allowed Ronald Araujo to score the goal which broke the tie.
However, the most used pattern was to use the Valverde position during the build-up to get advantage of his ability to deliver long passes. Scaloni proposed a very high defensive line, and Uruguay was able to manipulate this line by using long passes to play behind. The speed of run of players like Darwin Nunez or Maximiliano Araujo allowed La Celeste to give consistency to this plan.
CONCLUSION
Marcelo Bielsa provided last night an other tactical masterclass of his career who allowed Uruguay to defeat the World Champions, still unbeaten from the day Leo Messi lifted the World Cup at Doha. The lesson from this match given by "El Loco" is that the players must be used in order to provide specific duties based on the opponent. Bielsa is well recognized for his ability to study in very detailed way his opponents and this match is a big proof of this ability.
Having a coach being able to understand strength and weaknesses of opponents like Bielsa is a big added value on National team level, if Uruguay keep consistency to the journey started by the Argentinian coach they could be in the list of the team better to avoid in the next World Cup and in next Copa America.
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