Match date: 5 May 2015

Juventus recently clinched their fourth consecutive Scudetto, but their recent European campaigns have been far from successful. This year, however, under the management of Massimiliano Allegri, they’ve managed to do far better than the Italian champions did under Conte, who left Juventus for the Italian national team during the summer.

Real Madrid, who won the Champions League last year, find themselves behind Barcelona in La Liga, but still within a good chance of defending their La Decima triumph of last year.

Allegri and Juventus are without Pogba, but are able to name a strong starting XI in a 4-4-2 with a diamond midfield and with Morata, playing Real Madrid for the first time since his move in the summer from the Spanish club, partnering Tevez.

Carlo Ancelotti and Real Madrid, however, find themselves with a bit of an injury crisis with the likes of Luka Modric and Karim Benzema, both of whom would be certain starters, out. As he did in the second leg of the quarterfinal, Sergio Ramos was in midfield alongside Toni Kroos as Real Madrid played in a 4-4-2.

Flat 4-4-2 v Diamond 4-4-2

With both teams playing in a 4-4-2, but with different midfield setups, this game was always going to interesting in terms of theoretical tactics. As the g/ame went on, a lot of the theoretical match ups and issues for each side came about. One thing that every team that plays Juventus has to think about is what to do about Pirlo, who more often than not dictates Juventus’ play. Sometimes, teams stand off him and he is allowed to pull the strings with ease, while other times when he is pressed well, with Juventus’ matches against Dortmund being a good example, the Italian playmaker struggles to have an influence. With the way Real Madrid and Juventus were lining up, Pirlo was theoretically free. To limit his influence, Ancelotti made Bale drop from a forward position on to Pirlo, which had mixed results. At times, Bale was touch tight and Juventus were unable to play through Pirlo, but there were far too many times, from a Real Madrid perspective, that Pirlo was able to have time and space to play freely. The Italian playmaker was caught a few times on the ball, but neither led to true attempts on goal.

For Juventus, a question of defending in the wide areas and putting pressure on Sergio Ramos and Toni Kroos was somewhat of a question. The midfield diamond obviously means that Juventus’ was narrow, but Marchisio and Sturaro would shuffle outside to help Lichtsteiner and Evra while Vidal mostly stuck to Toni Kroos, but would shift to Ramos at times. Tevez came important for Juventus in terms of overloading the middle third of the field both when Juventus were with and without the ball. When Juventus were forced to defend deep around their penalty area, the midfield diamond often became a flat midfield four with Pirlo and Vidal in the middle and Marchisio and Sturaro in the wide areas. Below is a good example of this and notice that Tevez and Morata are both out of the screen capture as they stayed high up the pitch. Tevez would only apply pressure and overload the middle when Real Madrid had the ball around the halfway line or when Juventus had the ball deep and he wanted to get into the space between the lines.

Madrid Defend High, Tevez Movement

There were two different displays of high pressure defenses. Juventus tried to press Real Madrid early on in the game and it was relatively effective and put Real Madrid on the back foot for much of the opening stages, but for the large majority of the game, Juventus sat in a mid block, especially after they scored their opener. Real Madrid, however, looked to defend very high up the pitch. Interestingly enough, Real Madrid were not exactly pressing in a manner that one would expect with so many players defending high up the field. Many times, the Madrid players were three and four yards off a Juventus player, which allowed the home side to play the ball around the back with relative comfort despite Madrid having a number of players forward. Below is a good example of this as six Real Madrid players are in Juventus’ half with Pirlo on the ball just outside of the penalty area, but overall, the pressure is limited compared to what would be expected from a team defending with six players in the opposition’s half.

This commitment to defending high caused Real Madrid problems and played into Juventus’ plan a bit. The Italian side wanted these situations to happen as it allowed Tevez and Morata to find spaces easily and so Juventus were able to play directly into the two forwards, bypassing both their own midfield and Real Madrid’s, now high, midfield four (Juventus did this against Dortmund, another team that pressed them high, in the match that was linked above). An excellent example of this came very early on in the match. At around 2:45 into the match, Pirlo picks up the ball, plays a pass into Tevez’s feet that goes through the flat Real Madrid midfield and finds the Argentine in a huge amount of space as he dropped off Varane. Tevez then runs at the Real Madrid back line before finding Sturaro who hits a low shot to Casillas near post.

Tevez’s movement was incredibly important for Juventus. As just mentioned above, Real Madrid were not applying intense pressure, but were high up the pitch and seemed to be trying to eliminate the forward passing lanes which meant that Tevez was always on the move. Juventus’ opening goal showed the Argentine’s excellent movement. He was constantly moving from space to space and Varane seemed either afraid or instructed not to follow him, but this just allowed for him to finding space inside the Real Madrid penalty area. Below you can see where Juventus had the ball for much of their possession as they looked to find the passing lanes to Tevez and Morata. On the right is a screen capture of Tevez’s movement just before the goal.

Real Madrid Look Wide, But Not Consistently

With the midfield sufficiently overload and with Juventus’ diamond very narrow at times and with Isco and James drifting inside much of the time, it meant that Real Madrid’s best attacks came in the wide areas through Carvajal and Marcelo. The full backs had space, as any full back would against a diamond midfield, and Marchisio and Sturaro were sometimes too slow to move out and close them down. For much of the match, Real Madrid struggled to break down Juventus’ defensive shape, especially when the home side were defending in a deep block. However, the two notable times that Real Madrid were able to penetrate Juventus, they had two excellent chances, with Ronaldo scoring one and James Rodriguez heading his chance onto the crossbar. Both these chances came from movements in the wide area.

Unfortunately for Real Madrid, they were unable to get Marcelo and Carvajal into dangerous areas consistently. Far too often, Real Madrid’s build up was too slow to exploit the wide areas and they allowed Juventus to get into their deep block with a flat midfield four meaning the wide areas were covered well. Rather frustratingly, there were a few opportunities that Real Madrid could have exploited one of the full backs but Sergio Ramos’ distribution, in particular, was very poor.

Changes

Ancelotti made the first change of the night bringing Javier Hernandez on for Isco and it changed Real Madrid from a 4-4-2 into much more of a 4-3-3 with Ramos and James in front of Kroos and the front three of Ronaldo, Bale, and Hernandez interchanging. This change was coupled with Allegri’s own change, with Barzagli coming on for Sturaro, changing Juventus from a 4-4-2 with a diamond midfield to a 3-5-2. Barzagli played as the right centre back of the back three and Juventus were able to match up well with Real Madrid’s front three. This allowed Real Madrid much more of the ball, with Juventus looking to hold onto their lead and hope for a chance to add a third. The remaining 25 minutes of the match saw the two sides in their new shapes, but neither had a telling change on the match with Real Madrid having most of the ball and Juventus looking to counter.

Conclusion

Llorente, brought on for Morata in the 78th, had an excellent chance to give Juventus a 3-1 lead, but headed his effort into the ground before it bounced into Casillas’ arms.

It was a tactically interesting match and one where Allegri used a similar scheme from when he beat Dortmund earlier in the Champions League. He allows the opposition to move up the pitch and then relies on Tevez’s movement to find the passing lanes that the opposition has not closed and Pirlo and Bonucci’s ability to find Tevez in these spaces. It worked with a 2-1 win then and it worked against Real Madrid as well.

It will be interesting to see how Juventus approach the second leg, however. WIll Allegri sit on a 2-1 lead and look to play a 3-5-2 for the entirety of the match? Or will he be bold and look to play as they did large parts of this match. Real Madrid, with a second leg at home and an away goal in a 2-1 score, have an excellent chance of progressing to the final and defending their title.