{"id":201,"date":"2013-04-25T14:01:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T14:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/2013\/04\/25\/match-analysis-borussia-dortmund-v-real-madrid\/"},"modified":"2017-12-09T06:10:55","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T06:10:55","slug":"match-analysis-borussia-dortmund-v-real-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/2013\/04\/25\/match-analysis-borussia-dortmund-v-real-madrid\/","title":{"rendered":"Borussia Dortmund v Real Madrid (4-1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Match date: 24 April 2013<\/em><\/p>\n

A day after Bayern Munich put in an impressive display against Barcelona, another German and Spanish semifinal awaited between the record holder of most European Cups in Real Madrid and the only team in the competition that remains unbeaten.<\/p>\n

Dortmund came out as expected with arguably their strongest strong, however, Real Madrid were without Alvaro Arbeloa, which meant the inclusion of Pepe at centre back with Sergio Ramos going out to right back. Another interesting decision by Jose Mourinho was to start Luka Modric as part of his midfield three with Mesut\u00a0\u00d6zil on the right rather than\u00a0\u00d6zil in the middle and Di Maria on the right.<\/p>\n

Dortmund set up in a more traditional 4-2-3-1 than Real Madrid, who looked more like a 4-3-3 with the high play of Ronaldo and\u00a0\u00d6zil on the wings and Sami Khedira\u2019s presence forward.<\/p>\n

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G\u00fcndo\u011fan\u00a0and G\u00f6<\/strong>tze<\/strong><\/p>\n

Both\u00a0G\u00fcndo\u011fan\u00a0and G\u00f6tze had a significant impact in their part of the field when Dortmund were both with and without the ball.\u00a0G\u00fcndo\u011fan, who has been very good throughout Dortmund\u2019s Champions League campaign,<\/a>\u00a0had freedom in the middle of the field to pick passes and receive the ball from Hummels and Subotic while working well on the defensive side, closing down Modric and Khedira well. His freedom in the middle was due to Higuain\u2019s lack of closing down; he neither pressed Hummels or Subotic hard nor did he try to disrupt\u00a0G\u00fcndo\u011fan. In the Bayern Munich match, Gomez and M\u00fcller worked hard to ensure Sergio Busquets didn\u2019t have his typical freedom and showed just how important it was to work hard to close down the deeper lying midfielder in sides like Dortmund and Barcelona.<\/p>\n

G\u00fcndo\u011fan\u00a0was able to receive the ball with relative ease and distribute to the wide players and Robert Lewandowski, who did well dropping into midfield to receive the ball.<\/p>\n

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He showed\u00a0versatility\u00a0in his role as well. As Dortmund worked hard to cut out Real Madrid\u2019s spells of possession,\u00a0G\u00fcndo\u011fan\u00a0won the ball back well and was able to send his teammates on counter attacks. As Dortmund really got a hold of the game in the second half, he was able to push forward, not just positionally, but with powerful runs forward, including a really good run that forced Diego Lopez into a save.<\/p>\n

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G\u00f6tze\u00a0did his part as well. On paper, he was the middle of Dortmund\u2019s three behind Lewandowski, but rarely did he stay in that area. Xabi Alonso was certainly told by Jose Mourinho that he had a task to try to keep\u00a0G\u00f6tze out of the game as much as possible, as he had done very well against Lionel Messi in the El Clasicos in late February and early March<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, against\u00a0G\u00f6tze, it was much more difficult as\u00a0G\u00f6tze\u00a0never stayed in any area for very long, drifting laterally out to the wide areas frequently to receive the ball as he did for Dortmund\u2019s first goal and create numbers-up situations. He had freedom in the wide areas due to\u00a0\u00d6zil and Ronaldo not tracking back and the first goal may have been the result of the exclusion of Di Maria in Real Madrid\u2019s starting XI. He is seen as Madrid\u2019s only really defensive winger, at least by Mourinho as we saw in the Galatasaray match, and perhaps his inclusion would have filled the space on the left side that\u00a0G\u00f6tze\u00a0was able to drift into.<\/p>\n

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Lewandowski v Higuain<\/strong><\/p>\n

The match displayed polar opposite displays from each team\u2019s striker. Lewandowski obviously being the better of the two as he got four goals, but it wasn\u2019t just his goal scoring feats that bettered Higuain, he was much more willing to work for his team on and off the ball. Lewandowski consistently dropped into midfield to receive the ball to either his feet or chest and looked to get his teammates involved and spin off into space. His movement dragged Pepe and Varane out of their comfort areas, a good example being early on when Lewandowski received the ball and carried it into Dortmund\u2019s half on the right touchline with Varane following him.<\/p>\n

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Reus v Ronaldo<\/strong><\/p>\n

Both deployed on the left side of their teams attack, Reus might not have gotten a goal, but he bested Ronaldo on both side of the ball. Reus\u2019 running with the ball took Real\u2019s defenders out of position, a good example being his run that led to a shot which Lopez parried into the path of a free Lewandowski who was all alone because of Reus\u2019 dragging of Real defenders. Ronaldo didn\u2019t have the same impact, a lot of which had to do to Dortmund\u2019s good defending. Within the opening minutes, Ronaldo dribbled a ball out of play after being pressed by Piszczek and Blaszczykowski.<\/p>\n

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Their work without the ball was completely different too as Ronaldo stayed high up the pitch, Reus would drop to help Schmelzer. Reus won each of his 3 tackles, Ronaldo didn\u2019t attempt one.<\/p>\n

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Dortmund Without the Ball<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the key parts to Dortmund\u2019s win was pressing Real and winning the ball back quickly. Pressing is really a key to any success that Dortmund has had over this year\u2019s Champions League campaign; when they press well, they win (and when they press okay, they simply draw). Dortmund put pressure on Real Madrid\u2019s back four as well as their midfielders, winning six of their seven tackles attempted in Real Madrid\u2019s half.<\/p>\n

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Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dortmund were the better side throughout the match and put in a fantastic display. They really outplayed Real Madrid in every part of the field, with Hummels and Subotic both very comfortable, the midfield winning the ball back well and connecting passes, and Lewandowski and\u00a0G\u00f6tze both controlling the attacking play in different ways. They only looked nervy after conceding, but were lucky to have half time just minutes away to allow them to settle again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Match date: 24 April 2013 A day after Bayern Munich put in an impressive display against Barcelona, another German and Spanish semifinal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[805],"tags":[701,12,105,28,716,104,2,134,7,21,699,649,25,219,109,226,11,27],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-champions-league","tag-701","tag-analysis","tag-borussia-dortmund","tag-champions-league","tag-cristiano-ronaldo","tag-dortmund","tag-football","tag-gundogan","tag-jose-mourinho","tag-jurgen-klopp","tag-marco-reus","tag-mario-gotze","tag-pressing","tag-real-madrid","tag-robert-lewandowski","tag-ronaldo","tag-tactics","tag-uefa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/1.png?fit=500%2C363&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":677,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}