Saturday brought us the most eagerly anticipated Clasico for several seasons.
That was partly because the two sides’ midweek Champions League wins over strong German visitors days earlier showed their commitment to attack: Real Madrid came back from two down to defeat Borussia Dortmund 5-2, while Barcelona thrashed Bayern Munich 4-1. An open, attack-minded game seemed assured.
It was also because the two clubs feel like themselves again.
For much of the past half-century, Madrid and Barca have been easy to view as caricatures with opposing ideals. Madrid have traditionally been more obsessed with signing superstars, and their strategy has generally relied on moments of magic from world-class attackers. As a general rule, Barcelona have been about a more collective philosophy, based on bringing through young players and focusing on possession dominance.
At times in recent years, though, it felt as if Madrid had introduced elements of Barcelona’s approach: long-serving youth products were crucial in big games, and Toni Kroos and Luka Modric were the world’s best deep playmakers. Meanwhile, Barca endured a fallow period in terms of academy graduates, and became obsessed with big-money signings, few of whom proved successful. The traditional narrative no longer worked.
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That is, until Saturday night in the Spanish capital, when familiar battle lines emerged.
This was Kylian Mbappe’s eagerly anticipated first Clasico, and he played up front alongside Vinicius Junior, who is likely to win the Ballon d’Or tonight. Barcelona’s starting XI featured no new signings from the summer, but in Inaki Pena, Pau Cubarsi, Alejandro Balde, Marc Casado, Fermin Lopez and Lamine Yamal, it was packed with players from their youth system.
Mbappe has already been flagged 17 times for offside in his brief La Liga career (Angel Martinez/Getty Images)
Tactically, there had been suggestions Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti was planning to use a diamond midfield but, instead, it was a simple 4-4-2 with Vinicius Jr and Mbappe up top, eternally trying to break in behind. Mbappe was caught offside eight times, and on the two occasions when he successfully timed his runs, goalkeeper Pena foiled him in one-on-one situations. Meanwhile, Vinicius Jr and Mbappe offered nothing without possession, switching off from defensive duties and allowing Barca to play through them.
Madrid’s issue was almost comically simple.
They played a flat 4-4-2, and while that system is a workable defensive shape if the side involved remains compact, Madrid’s lines were often very stretched. Therefore, Barcelona’s three-man midfield always overloaded them in the centre, usually with Lopez, in the No 10, finding space between the lines, like here:
This was the first warning sign.
With Barcelona playing out to the left of defence, Madrid midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni is tracking Casado, while pointing for someone to pick up Lopez. But it seems like nobody knows who is supposed to be doing that.
Lopez drifts laterally in oceans of space between the lines, with Barca’s left-winger Raphinha also dropping into that area.
They slightly confuse one another on this occasion, and the ball runs loose from the latter’s flick.
But it was remarkable how often this issue played out.
Here’s centre-back Cubarsi in possession, and the same pattern again: Tchouameni and Federico Valverde close down Casado and Pedri, leaving Lopez free between the lines.
The passing lane to him isn’t on, so Cubarsi goes shorter into Casado. Tchouameni is slow to close him down, hesitating while glancing over his shoulder, nervous about Lopez’s position.
The easy pass for Casado is directly to the feet of striker Robert Lewandowski, who comes short between the lines and gets fouled. It shouldn’t be this easy for Barcelona to work the ball through the centre of the pitch.
The same thing kept happening.
In this example from 13 minutes in, Madrid’s two central midfielders push up towards Pedri and Casado, and this time three opposition players — Lopez, Raphinha and Lewandowski — are free between the lines…
…Raphinha receives the ball and can turn and run at Madrid’s defence.
Here’s Lopez with almost the entire centre circle to himself, taking a pass from Jules Kounde.
At other times, with so much ground to cover, Madrid’s central midfielders sometimes stayed deep and allowed space in front of them. Pedri has an extraordinary amount of room to operate here, with Mbappe and Vinicius Jr nowhere to be seen.
Ten minutes later — same thing.
Maybe this was the most indicative moment: Casado plays a ball to Pedri while directing the next pass, to Lopez. It was as simple as that; the third Barcelona midfielder was always free.
Manager Hansi Flick made a slight tweak at half-time, introducing Frenkie de Jong for Lopez, with Pedri pushing forward to the No 10 position. But the pattern was the same and brought the game’s first two goals.
Here’s the opener. It starts with Casado on the ball in a deep position. In theory, his task is to break Madrid’s first line — Vinicius Jr and Mbappe.
But that isn’t really a challenge at all, because neither of them shows much interest in trying to challenge. Casado waltzes into the opposition half, and now Madrid’s midfielders have to think about engaging.
Perhaps Ancelotti’s attempted half-time solution was telling his centre-backs to push up tighter to players between the lines, because Madrid get themselves into an awful state here.
With Pedri in an inside-right role and Raphinha again moving inside from the flank, Eder Militao and Antonio Rudiger step up in advance of their full-backs. This means Lewandowski’s run in behind is made very simple, and Casado slips the pass through with no pressure on him whatsoever.
Lewandowski then took the shot surprisingly early, calmly curling the ball home.
The second goal also stemmed from that very basic three-versus-two on midfield.
When this sideways pass is played into Casado, Valverde goes chasing the ball, so Casado slides in to knock it past him, and on to Pedri.
Pedri is then closed down by Tchouameni, so plays the ball back to De Jong. Again, one of the three is always free.
And then came a classic bit of wide play, with Raphinha moving inside to play a one-two, dragging right-back Lucas Vazquez inside and opening up space for Balde on the outside of Jude Bellingham.
De Jong then releases Balde into space…
…and the cross is perfect…
…for Lewandowski to head home his second goal in three minutes.
The eventual 4-0 scoreline was partly because Madrid went chasing the game — and they did have their chances. On another day, Mbappe might have had a couple of goals and so justified his lack of defensive effort.
But the funny thing is that his major problem was the poor timing of his runs — because he always started on the shoulder of the last defender, he was constantly in an offside position as Barcelona stepped up.
If he and Vinicius Jr had shown more defensive diligence, dropping 20 yards to help out their midfielders, then perhaps he would have been more effective in attack too, starting his runs from deeper and not being flagged so regularly.
Madrid’s tactical naivety was alarming. Top-level modern sides are usually so compact, and so wary of being undermanned in central midfield, that overloads these days come from clever movement and rotations out wide, rather than a simple three-versus-two in the centre.
This was almost a parody of these sides’ two historic styles: Barcelona’s tiki-taka dominating the midfield, and Madrid being top-heavy thanks to the arrival of a galactico.
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