Icy-Acanthisitta3299

The first thing that I want to mention is that this loss of United is probably more due to the bad performance of players than the strategy. Sure both City and United had their own strategies and to some extent both executed it but City took their chances a lot better.

Now, to the tactics, my first question is, why did Bruno play on the right and Mctominay in the center in the first half. At I least didn't find any answer to this question. Stones as always stepped up in the midfield along with Rodri which means both Bruno and Mctominay have to cover them, but this is where the problem started. Bernardo Silva started drifting wide, like really wide, and the man marking him, Eriksen had two choices, either follow him and get out of his position, leaving Haaland to drop in the vacant space or stay in his position so that Haaland can't drop and let Silva have the space in the wide areas because Bruno was unable to track back Silva, this led to City attacking mostly from the right side of United and although it didn't do much in the first half, the second goal came from exactly this kind of play.

The solution to this by Ten Hag was to make McTominay mark Silva and bring Mount in the number 10 spot which to be honest worked for quite some time. McTominay stayed glued to Silva but this is where Pep played his second move, Stones wasn't only joining Rodri in the midfield but pushing really high, in the middle of the second half he was almost at the edge of the box or in the box, now since McTominay was dragged out by Silva, Eriksen had to deal with both Stones and Alvarez, no doubt in the second half Alvarez had so many touches and Foden was so dangerous.

This came with a risk though, since City actually had just Gvardiol and Ruben Dias at the back line, United's long balls were a lot more effective. In fact they posed some threats even at the end of the first half, but in the second half City's defense looked a bit shaky as Stones was really high and even Gvardiol sometimes stepped up.

As I said in the beginning, although all these plans and strategies worked, I still feel the defeat was mostly due to very bad performance by United's defense. Amrabat's marking skills weren't that good, there were multiple times where Haaland got free headers in the box (in fact the second goal came from that only) and in attack United kinda looked clueless except to make a few runs behind the defense.

Top performance by Bernardo Silva, John Stones and Foden. Foden has really grown as a player and makes a lot better decisions now, he is slowly getting more into Guardiola style of play. Top player for United? has to be Onana, without him this would have been a 4-5 goal defeat for United.

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Xavi got his 1st half tactics right, a solid 3 - box - 3 with Cancelo pinning down Mendy, Balde dragging Valverde wide and Felix dragging Carvajal out of position, Kroos had to deal with all the high press and also defend large amount of space. Bellingham and Tchouameni were always high up trying to mark Gundogan and Gavi without much success as Barcelona always had numerical advantage during build up and even in the final third.

Defensively Xavi was very spot on too. Barca went to back 5 with two holding midfielders in front of them. Vinicius and Carvajal could have all the space in the wide areas but the 3 CBs in the center literally had nobody to deal with. Bellingham was very tightly marked by Gavi for the entire first half and majority of the second half and Vinicius didn't do much against Araujo either.

But the only thing Xavi didn't plan for was the long game. No team can keep up that amount of high press and constant running for 90 mins. Not to mention most of Barca was in the bench. Although Kroos lost possession and didn't do much in the first half, it can be said that it was a tactical choice to start Kroos instead of Camavinga or probably Modric. Ancelotti might not be on par with young more tactically advanced managers but his greatest strength is his knowledge of players and how to use them in the perfect position and perfect time of the match. Kroos is excellent when it comes to soaking up the pressure, sure camavinga can do that too but Kroos has proven it over the years and in a game like this Ancelotti chose the veteran in that duty. Real Madrid baited most of the press, made Barcelona run hard and by the 60th minute they were out of their energy.

Sure the story could have been a lot different if Barca would have scored 2-3 goals in the first half. All this press baiting and soaking up pressure wouldn't have done anything then but that's the risk you have to take and Ancelotti did take the risk. Once they were tired and Bellingham found the goal Ancelotti gave the license to Modric to use the space to his advantage and who can do it better than Luka !

At the end Bellingham was inevitable. He is a very skilled player with very good sense of positioning (watch his run for the second goal) but his greatest asset is his willpower. He didn't actually have a very good game until his first goal, the congested central zone and Gavi's tight marking didn't let Bellingham have his usual game but he knew what was needed and he never gave up.

Another big factor is Romeu. I don't know why Gavi was subbed, he had an excellent match but Romeu kept making mistakes, he failed to track the run of Modric multiple times and Barca payed for it.