Manchester City – Real Madrid: Carlo Casts Pep’s Raised Eyebrow Away (2-3)

Having met each of the past four seasons, matchups between Manchester City and Real Madrid have been dictated by Pep Guardiola’s meticulous game planning or Carlo Ancelotti’s raised eyebrow (or the power of “going brrr.”) When Pep attempted to raise his own, Real Madrid deservedly punished them at the death.

Tactical analysis and match report by Joel Parker.

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In the tactic-sphere, Pep Guardiola and Carlo Ancelotti have continued to be listed between positional and apositional frameworks. Matchups in the later stages of the Champions League inflated the conversation, but how does this conversation unfold when one knocks the other out of the competition early?

Despite the stacked amount of talent, there’s a reason that City and Real are meeting so early. Pep has yet to figure out a long-term solution to his broken press, which has created a domino effect into stale in-possession patterns and a rest defense incapable of putting out fires. 

So the perfect field for some of the Madrid attackers? The problem for Ancelotti is that his buildup principles are far too predictable: too many players committed deep and options isolated on the right. On top of this, the pressing plan from Ancelotti has always left Madrid vulnerable in many different situations. With two elite squads sharing very similar problems, it was the ideal playing field for a high goal count, as each of the previous games tended to bring.

Pep made wholesale changes, to the team that left it late in the FA Cup, away to Leyton Orient. This saw City start with five center-backs, with John Stones in the pivot position. The rest of the lineup was familiar, Savinho, Kevin de Bruyne and Jack Grealish making up the attack with Erling Haaland leading the team.

The injury crisis to the Real Madrid defense worsened with Lucas Vázquez picking up a hamstring injury. With two right-backs injured and no available center-backs, Federico Valverde was the player to fill in for Vázquez, whilst Aurélien Tchouaméni and Raúl Asencio. In the attack, Jude Bellingham, Rodrygo, Vinícius Jr. and Kylian Mbappé all started.

The left side offers an exit

What has been a recurring theme for Ancelotti against Pep has been the Italian’s incapability of finding a comfortable way through the City high press. This usually leads to City having plenty of possession control, especially at the Ethiad, but the left side of Real Madrid’s deep circulation found a way to keep the ball against City’s press.

Out of possession, the hosts approached in their standard 3-2-4-1/assymetric 4-1-4-1 formation, with Bernardo Silva next to De Bruyne in the center. On the right side, Savinho always stepped outward onto Ferland Mendy and this left the lane open to connect with Vinícius hugging the touchline. Although Manuel Akanji, the right-back selected for this game, maintained his distance, there was always some space for the Brazilian to move the ball back as Stones covered Jude Bellingham, Silva had to drop out from the center-left position and Rúben Dias had Mbappé to contend with.

As phases in possession grew, the double pivot of Eduardo Camavinga and Dani Ceballos took up more advantageous positions within the deep buildup. This saw one of the two becoming the single pivot, whilst Ceballos pushed ahead of Mendy which took Stones away from Bellingham. With Ceballos pushing out, this meant that Vinícius could go up against Dias and Mbappé moved onto the right side of the attack alongside Rodrygo.

10^th minute: Buildup to Mbappé chance. Savinho always pressed outwards onto Mendy, when City approached in their high block, so Ceballos stepped towards the touchline to take Stones away from Bellingham. Akanji was delayed to jump onto Bellingham and an impressive touch from Vinícius took the ball away from an overly aggressive Dias.

From this point, Real aimed to fire the ball behind the City defensive line from the middle third. Although City could jump onto their attackers, the timings meant they struggled to double up on them and it was Ancelotti’s team that created the better chances at the start of the game. Ten minutes in, Ceballos moved onto the left to free Bellingham, which saw a trivela pass from Vinícius to set Mbappé through on the right side. His low shot, from a slightly difficult angle due to Joško Gvardiol saw Ederson save the shot.

Less than a minute later, Madrid was able to create a turnover through Ederson throwing the ball in the center and neither Silva nor Grealish could get it back out wide. Madrid circulated high through some nice interchanges between Mbappé and Rodrygo before the Brazilian laterally carried and poked Mendy through. He cut back to Vinícius, Ederson committed, Vinícius gave it back to Mendy but Nathan Aké was enough to keep the shot out.

Risk-averse City (with errors)

In possession, Pep tried to coax in more familiarity as City arranged themselves in a 2-3-4-1 system, which we saw more regularly in the later part of last season. In the process, Gvardiol and Akanji bounced between taking up a wider position and sitting next to Stones ahead of the center-backs, with De Bruyne and Silva as interiors in the line of four.

From the start, Gvardiol was willing to make a direct run to join the attack but it was not until the Real defense was more frantic that they truly benefitted from him being left free in these situations. Seventeen minutes in, Valverde jumped up high onto De Bruyne, who had dropped into the left back space, and Gvardiol took the ball back inside with Tchouaméni on the touchline towards Grealish; Haaland drove into the space. As Haaland passed back to Grealish, the winger was free on the underside to line his ball up to Gvardiol, who had darted into the box before Madrid had reset their defensive block. The Croatian chested back and Haaland was there to finish from close range.

17^th minute: Buildup to City’s first goal. After Gvardiol played a channel pass through to Haaland on transition, the Real Madrid defense attempted to reset. As they dropped, Grealish was left free for far too long and Gvardiol targetted the backline with the same run that he had been making earlier in the game. A touchback for Haaland to score.

City had got themselves in front, against the run of play, but the game state, for the rest of the first half, saw Pep’s team in control but very cautious in what they wanted to do with it. Against Real Madrid’s 4-4-2 formation, which situationally turned into a 5-3-2 shape with Ceballos dropping deeper, City’s line of three was capable of bunching up their midfield, but with three center-backs inside the block, play struggled to develop without a player deep that could break lines more often.

Although City was able to play through Madrid’s high press with a lot of comfort, the tempo generated was kneecapped once Akanji and Gvardiol took up more narrow positions and the two of Dias and Aké started to exchange. However, this isn’t to say that City could not create spaces. We did see some of the patterns that have been very reliable for Guardiola: including De Bruyne overlapping around Phil Foden (who replaced the injured Grealish and saw Savinho switch flanks) whilst Foden could cut onto his left foot and test the goalkeeper from range.

Gvardiol also became a key component when Aké stepped forward with the ball. As Rodrygo was committed, Gvardiol’s halfspace run could force Ceballos to commit and more space would be open for Silva or Savinho. Alternatively, Silva could leave his center-left position and more space opened with Valverde almost placed on the touchline next to Savinho and Gvardiol pushing more forward, with Ceballos man-marking him.

34^th minute: Although City could generate spaces, they remained unproductive. As Aké stepped forward, Silva left the block and became free as Rodrygo approached the Dutch center-back. The trio between Aké, Silva and Gvardiol may have made rotations, but Madrid’s defensive line had a comfortable job defending against the City buildup because Ceballos/Camavinga still partook in man-marking roles and the tempo in their passing play hit a flat line once it was in the middle third.

But as the spaces creaked open, City refused to aggressively move through them. As a result, City remained tepid in their most controlled phases of the game. Possession circulated amongst their 2-3 arrangement but they could not pin the Madrid fullbacks deep to encourage underlaps nor actively create a way to increase the tempo. Furthermore, the City team was still littered with poor actions in and out of possession and Madrid started to grow back into the game as a result.

Real begins to take more control

Akanji was next to go off with an injury, replaced by Rico Lewis at the start of the second half. Five minutes in and it was clear that the dynamics started to shift in Madrid’s favor by generating the same kind of attacks in the first fifteen. One way that they approached this differently came through Bellingham, not just dropping on the left side but dropping into different areas and his lateral movement became an effective outlet.

As Bellingham spread the play, he could leave De Bruyne and evade pressure by moving into the space that Silva left, who followed Camavinga, whilst Stones was unable to step up quickly enough to stop Bellingham receiving. Ancelotti’s team could now facilitate their fullbacks into the attack more regularly and it was not long until they started to knock on the City door. After Bellingham looped the ball over for Valverde to run onto, Real circulated back to the left where Vinícius bypassed Lewis and his cross met Bellingham, the cross too fast for the Englishman to direct towards goal more accurately.

52^nd minute: After playing the ball from center-to-right, Bellingham moved out from the center-backs and into a position to join the rotation. Valverde gave the ball to Rodrygo and the Brazilian rotated back inside, where Bellingham had freed himself through De Bruyne not following his run, Silva positioned on Camavinga and Stones too far away to stop Bellingham from re-connecting with Valverde down the channel.

With shorter passing lanes opening to Mbappé in the center, Madrid’s attack became pretty reliable in spreading the ball far into the channel, with the space still available to attack the high defensive line. Rodrygo created the next chance just moments later, driving into the box and cutting back to Mbappé, another save from Ederson in the process. Rodrygo continued to influence the attack in multiple areas through some impressive touches in transition and around the box for Vinícius to continue attacking Lewis on the left side.

Just before the hour mark, it was Ceballos who set up the next big opportunity, brought down by Silva after Rodrygo and Vinícius carried the ball in transition. From the free-kick, the shot bounced back to Ceballos, with Mbappé reading the situation before anyone else in the line of players just offset the defensive wall. Ceballos crossed back where Mbappé became completely free and although he miss-hit the shot, it was enough to fool Ederson and spin in slow motion towards the opposite corner.

Their offensive threat did not stop there. Real could still bank on the left side being a reliable route to jump through City’s high block and a minute after scoring, they would do it again. As Asencio moved the ball around De Bruyne, Foden was forced inward and this gave room for Mendy to pass up the channel to Mbappé. Gvardiol may have intervened, but Rodrygo passed straight back to Mbappé and his ball trickled to Valverde, but his shot was narrowly wide. Moving out of the first line created once again when Ceballos carried between De Bruyne and Foden, before switching to Valverde. He curled the ball early and towards the back post, Bellingham darted behind Lewis and forced another save out of Ederson.

More dramatic twists and turns

But just when momentum appeared in Madrid’s favor, City’s unproductive 2-3-4-1 set-up started to grab hold of proceedings once more. An underlap from Lewis was able to gain entry into the area, but City looked no closer to creating despite having Lewis and Mateo Kovačić in the 2-3 arrangement. However, a nice interchange through Gvardiol’s wall pass to Kovačić, De Bruyne dropping to take Ceballos and releasing Lewis enabled one academy graduate to pass to another. Mendy started to lose separation on Foden before Ceballos clattered into the attacker and a penalty was awarded. Haaland converted low into the bottom left corner, perhaps Guardiola had summoned enough black magic this time around?

Ancelotti made his first two changes of the game just after the goal, with ten minutes left to play. Luka Modrić and Brahim Díaz were called upon and Real Madrid got into phases where they could circulate a little more often.

Five minutes left, weak distribution from Ederson saw the ball spill amongst the City defense and Real could attack through Bellingham sliding a pass to Díaz on the right and Vinícius attacking the space between Stones and Gvardiol. Ederson saved the shot from his Brazilian counterpart but put the ball straight back into the danger zone for Díaz to fire against his former club.

Perhaps a draw to take back to the Bernabéu would have been respectable enough, but poor actions from City made them vulnerable once again. Fran García, who had just replaced Mbappé, smacked the ball out of the defensive third, but a flick on by Kovačić put City right back in danger. Vinícius sprinted through with Ederson miles away from his goal, so Vinícius scooped the ball into Bellingham’s path and he slid in to complete a dramatic late turnaround.

Takeaways

Haaland’s penalty masked a massive breakdown from Man City in the second period. During the first, Real Madrid showcased that they were capable of getting through the City block, but nowhere near as consistently as what they had produced after the break. It leaves Pep Guardiola a mountain to climb in Madrid, but it’s another late collapse on a long list that has pilled up as the season has progressed.

Ancelotti can claim this as one of their most crucial victories of the campaign, considering how much Real Madrid have struggled to compete in the big games this season. His tactical blueprint may be outdated, but Ancelotti has shown that he is still able to build a strong unit and Real Madrid is always going to be in with an opportunity, especially with the attackers they have. Will next week produce one of the calmer occasions between these two?

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