How Manchester City stopped Barcelona

 

UWCL group phase started last week and the focus of this edition is to understand if there is some team able to stop Barcelona's dominance in the competition. We just needed one game to see that there is a way to stop them, thanks to Manchester City which stopped the Catalan team through a really dominant match, especially in the first half. The final result (2-0) probably did not provide the real value of City's performance but it was enough to secure a statement win.

In this article I will try to explain how the 4-1-4-1 issued by Gareth Taylor was able to cope against Barça positional play with some final notes on the consistency of their approach throughout the season.

HOW THE 4-1-4-1 WORKS

We had several examples in the past (for example how Morocco got Spain positional play ineffective during the Qatar World Cup) of teams using 4-1-4-1 shape in order to stop connections between players avoiding to retreat the height of the defensive line. The unit behind the striker covers the half-spaces with the number eights, while the wingers cover the wings. This setup negates the access to the central zones in the build-up and progression phase forcing the opponent to go wide or to play long.

This is a typical setup during Barcelona build-up phase: the center-forward Shaw starts the pressure: she is required to force the play of the center-back (in this case Mapi Leon) closing the passing lane towards the center. In this situation she is not pressing in front Mapi but she is negating the access to Patri; behind her Park is covering Alexia Putellas to avoid she can receive the ball. However it is possible to see that in case Shaw jumps to Mapi, Park is ready to jump on Patri. In the meanwhile Miedema is close to Keira Walsh while Hemp and Fowler are ready to track the full-backs Batlle and Rolfo. In this way for Barcelona it was really hard to get progressing the action.

What happens behind this pressure line? The build-up of the previous image progressed through Mapi Leon performing a ball carry, this allows us to see how Manchester City was able to cope to Barça offensive structure: Putellas' position in the half space could create numerical superiority in the definition zone since Hasegawa, due to 4-1-4-1 structure was the lone midfielder in that zone. To avoid this gap Taylor made an interesting tweak by keeping the defensive line very narrow, therefore the right full-back Layzell used to occupy the half-space while the width was covered by Fowler retreating to follow Rolfo. In this way the young English defender was able to jump on Putellas avoiding her to advance and play in the definition zone.

In this example the structure of the first pressure is more recognizable: Shaw is providing direct pressure on the centre-back in order to force play laterally; Hemp is ready to jump on the right full-back Batlle, Park is already marking Patri while Miedema is traking Walsh. The space behind the first pressure unit is covered by Hasegawa who keeps track of the player moving in that zone. Again this setup made life difficult for Barcelona in the build-up phase forcing them to mistakes and playing the ball long. The 4-1-4-1 structure allows Manchester City's players also to shift based on the ball position in order to allow the teammate to provide the right pressure without worrying of what happens behind.

The map of the intercepted passes is a clear testament of the effectiveness of the City's strategy in  pressure. Especially in the first half It was very hard for Barcelona to progress play, indeed the Catalan team was able to generate just 11 positional attacks in the first half (their average in the last year was equal to 26). This stat provides a right understanding of Manchester City's good performance in terms of collective defending high on the pitch. Keeping this level of pressure is very ambitious as much as demanding in terms of effort, this explain the progressive dropping deep of the team in the second half, when Barcelona was able to be more dangerous but without finding the net.

This article written on The Coaches' Voice better explains which are the pro and cons of a 4-1-4-1 shape, it worth a read before moving to the next chapter dedicated on how Manchester City setup the offensive interpretation of the 4-1-4-1.

HOW MANCHESTER CITY MANIPULATED BARCELONA DEFENSE

The 4-1-4-1 shape of Manchester City was also useful to progress the ball property through the thirds. There was two keys in the way the English team progressed the play, first one is how the players was always staggering in order to create triangles through which move the ball, the second key was to occupy the pitch in order to have more player close to the ball, more options to progress the play and also to quickly recover the ball in case of loss.

The 4-1-4-1 is visible from the build-up phase composed by the four defenders and Hasegawa, the holding midfielder. Barcelona was focused to close central access, therefore this structure was useful to have the two full-backs as alternative options to move around Barcelona's pressure. The objective of this structure is to find a free player centrally, should it be a passing lane for Hasegawa that could act as a third-man or should it be using the goalkeeper Yamashita that can send a long ball behind Barcelona's pressure.

Behind such pressure we can appreciate how Manchester City use the staggering position of the players to manipulate the defensive line: in this example Miedema and Park are attracting the two Barcelona's midfielders, the space behind them is taken by Shaw, her movement is supported by Fowler and Hemp attacking the depth, therefore putting in big doubt the Catalan defensive line. In this way Shaw can easily control the ball and link-up with Miedema and Park while the full-backs support the progress of the play. This allows Manchester City to run towards opponent's goal committing many players, getting quick combinations much easier allowing them to create several potential chances to score.

The right shape and the right distances between the players allowed Manchester City to find several way to progress the ball, the most used one was to use the wide shape in the build-up to commit more players on the left-side, allowing the triangle composed by Casparij, Miedema and Hemp to progress play in quick fashion, like it happens in the situation leading to the corner-kick from which they scored the first goal. To support this triangle on the left, Hasegawa was providing cover in case the ball is lost and Greenwood, who started this situation in the build-up phase is ready to help as well.

The most interesting thing about this progress of play is how the team was supporting it; as said before Manchester City committed many players in the progression and definition phase, thus allowing them to be ready to counter-press Barcelona effectively. In this example it is possible to appreciate how much player are overloading the central zone after Barcelona was able to clear a dangerous ball from the penalty area. The pressure given by Manchester City to Barcelona was the key of the success not only in the defensive phase but also when playing the ball.

PRINCIPLES AND STRUCTURE NEVER CHANGING

Looking more widely at how Manchester City is playing in this season, we can appreciate the consistency of the approach in both phases. After the statement win against Barcelona, City had two matches against Liverpool in the English Super League and against St. Polten in UWCL; even if Taylor made many rotations in the squad, the principles and the structure never changed.

 

Taking as example the map of the defensive duel had against Liverpool in WSL we can see the 33% of those duels happened in the offensive third, which means that the approach is always aggressive having the purpose to get the ball back high on the pitch. Except the second half against Barcelona in UWCL and against Arsenal in WSL, Manchester City's PPDA index was always lower than 10, meaning the approach is always aggressive. Such approach has its specific risks (for example the depth behind defensive line is caught sometime exposed) but so far it provided very high rewards, such as beating the best female team in the world.

The structure and the principle in possession are consistent as well: looking at the average positions taken from the last UWCL match against St.Polten, we can appreciate the 4-1 structure in build-up, while the five players upfront are staggered and rotate in order to enable quick combination to manipulate the opposition shape. Against St.Polten Taylor changed six players compared to the line-up which was able to get the win against Barcelona. This means Manchester City is able to keep consistent notwithstanding which players are on the pitch. 

Of course the category of each player is different; for example against St.Polten Shaw and Hemp was left on the bench until the last 30 minutes when they was called in to turn around a 2-1 loss into a 2-3 win.