Manchester City won the UEFA Champions League after beating Inter Milan 1-0. But the winning goal only arrived after Pep Guardiola finally solved a puzzle that the Italians had created for his side.
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00:00 Hi there everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here and Manchester City have won the Champions
00:09 League!
00:10 But you already knew that.
00:14 In the build up to this I actually heard one pundit say the only thing Manchester City
00:17 need to finally win the Champions League is for Pep to not mess with this team and of
00:23 course Pep messed with the team.
00:25 But my very dear friends, while I've already heard some people saying that these changes
00:28 nearly cost City their game and that they were bad, I'm here to tell you that actually
00:32 no, they were good.
00:34 In fact they were better than good.
00:36 They were f***ing genius.
00:38 Let's review.
00:39 Alright, so I've said it like a million times already this season, there's other
00:44 videos on the channel you can go watch about this specific thing but while theoretically
00:47 this is how Manchester City line up, we all know that now that's not true.
00:51 What happens is that Rodri shifts along to accommodate Johnstone stepping into the midfield
00:55 and Man City back four turn into a back three.
00:58 But this is where Pep Guardiola messed with the team because he didn't do this.
01:01 Instead Stones and Okanji swapped positions so he was actually starting in the right back
01:05 slot.
01:06 They went to a diamond in midfield with Gundogan at the head and when Stones stepped out from
01:09 the back he was doing so here on the right hand side of the diamond as like a proper
01:14 number eight central midfielder.
01:15 They still had pretty much the same back three they always do and if you know your football
01:19 history this is basically Johan Cruyff's old three diamond three thing from when he
01:24 was at Ajax and Barcelona.
01:26 This is football heritage.
01:27 And while for a long time during the game this looked like it wasn't really working
01:30 they couldn't get the ball in dangerous areas they were just knocking around at the
01:33 back it was actually a really smart thing to do to counteract how into play.
01:37 So this is City as they would normally be with the box in the middle I'm just going
01:40 to overlay into Milan's formation.
01:42 Now the reason they do this is because this four man box gives you a numerical advantage
01:46 over any teams that have three in the middle which is the vast majority of teams but the
01:49 weird way into set up means that this wouldn't work.
01:53 Between their two centre forwards and their two centre midfielders if they're brave enough
01:56 they can just go man for man with you in that area meaning you kind of have to go long from
02:00 the back into either the wide players who don't really like doing that or Haaland if
02:04 he drops off but he hasn't really got anybody around him to support.
02:07 So the thinking behind going to the diamond was that it will then give you a numerical
02:10 advantage in this area of the pitch instead it might be a little bit harder to build up
02:14 from the back but you've got three players who can all find a bit of space and you can
02:17 hit them with slightly more direct balls and again if Haaland then drops back to receive
02:21 he's got other players around him so you can make things happen here.
02:24 And this is such an interesting thing to talk about because it is the right decision and
02:27 it worked for what Manchester City were trying to do but they still didn't really create
02:31 team winning chances because Inter just played really really well.
02:34 They were really really brave with how high up the pitch they pressed them, they were
02:37 really brave in individual tackles and they won a lot of those singular battles.
02:42 Just as a really quick example you can see here John Stones has found himself in way
02:45 more space than he normally would because he's pushed much further up than he normally
02:48 would.
02:49 Edison hits him with a really accurate pass but the Inter defender I think it's Bastoni
02:52 just goes nope I'm going to cut that out, he beats him to the ball and wins that battle.
02:56 And then halfway through the first half Pep messed with it again, he swapped around Kevin
03:01 de Bruyne and Ikai Gundewan because de Bruyne is a slightly different player in that area.
03:05 We've seen it a couple of times this season when de Bruyne plays right off Haaland, he's
03:08 very good in that role because when Haaland creates a bit of space de Bruyne is not shy
03:12 about getting into it, basically playing as another centre forward.
03:15 He's great at receiving the ball in the channels, he can run, he can turn, he does things that
03:18 Gundewan doesn't normally do and this again was a really smart change.
03:22 In fact no sooner did they make this change they very nearly got de Bruyne in down the
03:26 right hand channel which would have been an amazing chance for them to get but yet again
03:30 Inter Milan just defended it really well.
03:33 Last-ditch defending is still defending.
03:35 This would almost certainly have brought Man City a goal at some point.
03:37 Like if we look here Gundewan gets the ball in his new role on the left hand side, he
03:41 hits Haaland who's dropped slightly off the defender, de Bruyne is already anticipating
03:45 this, makes the run, gets the knockdown and just forced ever so slightly wide but City
03:49 once they moved to this was starting to get a lot of joy.
03:52 Personally if they'd stayed like this for the whole game they probably would have won
03:54 a lot more comfortably but de Bruyne got injured halfway through the first half, he comes off
03:58 and is replaced by Phil Thoden who's an incredibly talented footballer and had a good game but
04:02 was not doing the same things that de Bruyne was doing in that position.
04:06 The problem this caused was it meant the only player they were reliably finding in any space
04:10 in Inter's half was John Stones.
04:13 Now John Stones is terrific, he's had an unbelievable season getting converted to this central midfielder
04:18 but one thing he's not yet is particularly creative.
04:21 I'm just going to overlay all his passes from the game, thank you Opta and just notice one,
04:26 how many he has but also how many of them are short or sideways or backwards.
04:31 There's almost no sort of penetration from him.
04:34 And that's not a criticism by the way, I actually think Stones had a really, really good game.
04:38 I saw an absolutely crazy stat on the Athletic by the way that Stones dribbled past six opposition
04:42 players in this game, which is the most in a Champions League final since Lionel Messi
04:47 in 2015.
04:48 But the problem is he's good at doing stuff like that and he's good at receiving the ball
04:51 and he's good at moving the ball around but what he's not good at is playing incisive
04:54 passes and creating chances so Inter were very happy for him to be the one receiving
04:58 the ball in space because it meant that it wasn't going to Thoden, it wasn't going to
05:02 Gundogan, it wasn't going to Silva or Grealish.
05:04 They were basically allowing the ball to go to him because that was the best option for
05:08 them.
05:09 In the second half Pep Guardiola made one key change to this which finally allowed them
05:14 to unlock Inter Milan just once and that was enough to win the game.
05:19 And that change was that Stones and Gundogan were both getting pushed wider and wider to
05:23 try and find the ball.
05:24 He told them to stop doing that and stay as central and as high as they possibly can.
05:29 And he also got Silva and Grealish to tuck in from the sides.
05:33 And what this did was it compacted Inter Milan's entire defence, meaning that now if any player
05:37 drops off the front line, anybody going with them is leaving a space centrally.
05:42 And as we've seen a million times from Man City this season, if you leave any space centrally
05:45 they are all really good and really comfortable at breaking out of their own position to get
05:49 into it.
05:50 And that's exactly how the goal came about because Bernardo Silva drops off ever so slightly
05:53 back into the middle which leaves this space here.
05:55 John Stones recognises this and just goes and plays fully as the right winger for a
05:59 second.
06:00 Now this gives Inter a problem because that's DiMarco's man, he should really be going with
06:03 him but he can't ignore Stones so he's kind of got to come out from that central area
06:07 leaving the gap here.
06:08 Akanji then carries the ball into the final third because DiMarco has to look after Stones,
06:13 he can't engage him so Bastoni has to break out of the back three and try and win that
06:17 ball leaving the gap for Silva.
06:19 Now yes there is some luck involved, it does require a deflection to end up at Rodri's
06:22 feet but if we just look here as the cutback comes in, the chaos this has created means
06:27 that Inter have left this entire area of the box completely unmanned.
06:31 And I guess the main point I want to make with this is I know that Lukaku should have
06:34 scored at the end and they had it off the bar then they hit their own player, Inter
06:37 fans will rightly feel they've been incredibly unlucky to lose this game but that's what
06:42 sort of fundamentally messing with your tactics and understanding your team and knowing the
06:46 game on this level does for you.
06:47 You do all the right things and you do them consistently, eventually you'll get a break
06:52 of the ball.
06:53 Like for me this game was the very definition of you can make your own luck.
06:57 And that's it, that's pretty much the entire video.
07:00 Like Pep Guardiola gets accused of overthinking these things all the time but you can't really
07:05 overthink football at this level.
07:07 The teams are so good and so well organised they will constantly give you problems and
07:11 the only way you're going to solve them is if you're constantly thinking about them and
07:15 constantly trying different things and that's what they did.
07:18 Anyway if you enjoyed that please do subscribe to 442 here on YouTube.
07:21 We've got loads of fun stuff planned over football's little summer holidays so if you
07:25 press the red button there and the little bell next to it you'll not miss a single one.
07:29 Until next time though thank you very much for watching.
07:31 Congratulations once again to our Manchester City supporting viewers.
07:34 Drink it in man.
07:36 I have been Adam Cleary, this is 442 and we'll see you soon.