UEFA Champions League final: Barcelona vs Juventus tactical preview
By Ryan Wrenn
PF90’s tactical expert Ryan Wrenn explores possible tactical trends and key battles in the UEFA Champions League final that promises to be a blockbuster…
Saturday’s Champions League Final in Berlin will pit Barcelona against Juventus for the first time since 2003. That game, a Champions League quarterfinal, shares some familiar faces with the upcoming final: Gianluigi Buffon is still in goal for Juve, Xavi will be featuring for Barca for the last time and Luis Enrique has traded the midfield for the dug-out.
This is Enrique’s first season in charge of Barca. To call it a remarkable freshman year feels like an understatement. After a shaky start, he’s molded Barca into a team that can legitimately consider itself the best in the world once again with a win Saturday. He’s taken the wayPep Guardiola made of the team and added new dimensions that ensure their success against virtually any opponent. The game on Saturday is the final and most important test of Enrique’s inaugural season. A win there will see Barca win the treble after taking the La Liga and the Copa del Rey trophies.
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Juventus will also be hoping to complete their own treble after another dominant season in Italy. The Turin side have been by far the best in Serie A for the last four seasons, yet they’ve struggled to translate that success into the Champions League until this campaign. New manager Massimiliano Allegri’s subtle restructuring has been unexpectedly successful. Though they’ve been fortunate to have met Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid in off seasons for both clubs, Juve’s improved quality is beyond evident. They won’t go into Saturday’s game as favorites, but they’ll put up a stiffer resistance than most might expect.
Let’s take a look at how these two teams will line up Saturday.
Barcelona
The most vital innovation Enrique has brought to Barcelona is pragmatism. Prior to this season, Barca relied upon a possession-intensive, patient game that lulled opponents to sleep as often as it cut them apart. Granted, they were the absolute best at that particular style of play, and it made them the most dominant team in the world for half a decade. Teams were learning how to play against it though, and Barca lacked the ability to meaningfully change gears if necessary.
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Recognizing the limits of one-dimensionality, Enrique brought in the players and mentality needed to add a bit of depth to Barca’s repertoire. The possession game is still there, of course. Tiki taka mainstays like Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets and of course Lionel Messi remain the heart of the team. With the addition of such players as Ivan Rakitić and Luis Suarez, however, Barca now have the ability to play a drastically more direct game when required. No longer is it necessary to rely on finding the correct dozen or so passes to get the ball into the back of the net. All it takes with a frontline of Neymar, Suarez and Messi is a single accurately punted ball over the top of the opposition’s defenders to achieve the same result. Barca is at its best when both styles are melded: opposition mistakes are ruthlessly exploited on the break and leads are patiently defended by hoarding possession.
It’s no easy task to see how this all works on paper. If we’re crudely dividing the players into offense and defense, we really only count Busquets, Javier Mascherano, Gerard Pique and the keeper as pure defenders. The rest are anxious to get the ball up the field, either into the net directly or onto the feet of someone who can get it there.
What makes the system work is the fact that the teamsheet is populated with some of the absolute best players in the world who also happen to be at the height of their form. Messi is having yet another career-defining season, Neymar and Suarez are slowly repaying their sizable pricetags, and Pique has again proven himself to be world-class. It’s not difficult to win games with a roster like Barca’s.
It sounds cliche, but none of those talents would be able to truly blossom without teamwork. No Barca player is an island. Pique shifts right to cover the forward run of Dani Alves who himself is stretching the game to afford space for Rakitić to launch a ball forward into the path of a goal-bound Neymar. That sounds like basic stuff, but it’s something that Barca have done better than anyone else for the past two decades. It’s genetic in a way that few other teams could replicate.
Juventus
Allegri’s Juventus is another team that has thrived on pragmatism this season, though for slightly different reasons than Barcelona. In all likelihood, Juve could have played the same gameplan every week in their domestic campaign and still expected to win the league. That’s a testament to the remarkable skill with which former manager Antonio Conte crafted the team as well as the unique brand of football played in Serie A. Italian football has always been more about outsmarting rather than outplaying your opponent, which is a slightly euphemistic way of saying that it’s more defensive than offensive. Consequently, it’s a slower, narrower and more subtle game than is played elsewhere in Europe. Conte’s Juve was built for that system, blending a formidable defense behind a collection of dynamic, multi-tasking midfielders that could boss the game on both sides of the ball.
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Unfortunately, those methods did not work as well in Europe. Teams played faster and wider than Juve’s Serie A opponents, and Conte’s commitment to a three-man defense often exposed the team. Though the midfield of Andrea Pirlo, Arturo Vidal, Claudio Machisio and Paul Pogba continued to be among the most impressive on the Continent, it wasn’t enough on its own to best the bigger teams.
When Conte left to coach the Italian national team last summer, many thought it an odd choice to bring in Allegri. Though he’d had some modest success at AC Milan, he’d never won anything in the European cup competitions that were supposedly Juve’s final frontier. Indeed, Allegri was seen as much too traditional for a team as exceptional as Juventus. How exactly could he improve the side?
It turns out that a bit of tradition is exactly what Juve needed. Allegri honored Conte’s legacy for many games in the season, retaining his three men at the back and crowded midfield. In the more crucial matches, such as the first and second legs of the Dortmund and Real Madrid games respectively, Juve tightened up and defended. Allegri reverted to a more traditional four man defense and pulled his vaunted trio of midfielders back, clustering them around Pirlo and rotating in and out of the point of a midfield diamond. Without the ball they sat deep and denied routes through to goal.
In possession, the ball was shuttled forward, often through the fine distribution of Pirlo, and it was left to Carlos Tevez, Álvaro Morata and whichever midfielder was at the diamond’s tip to push on to goal. It sounds like damning with faint praise, but when they’ve played this way, Juve look very prototypical Italian. It’s a game that takes patience and intelligence rather than pace and individual skill. It’s also a game that’s earned Juventus their first Champions League final in twelve years.
Key Battles
For all the words just expended on the makeup of these two teams, this game is about one man: Lionel Messi. His presence on the pitch nullifies most any possible tactical review or prediction. He cannot be marked, as his marvelously skillful goal against Athletico Bilbao last weekend demonstrates. He can and often does make up for any deficiencies of his teammates. He is a player that defies reason and expectation and, in the end, almost any opponent he’s pitted against.
There is some hope for Juve. An Allegri team has faced off against Barcelona and Messi before and actually won. That game happened in the knockout round of the 2012/13 Champions League season when Allegri’s AC Milan met Barcelona in the San Siro. Michael Cox over at Zonal Marking had an excellent breakdown of that exceptional game. Allegri had his team defend deep, as most teams do against Barca, but with a bit of a twist. They pressed high when necessary, denying Barcelona the ability to initiate attacks out of midfield while also keeping the forwards well covered. Though mostly a defensive triumph, some clever out balls and set plays won Milan the night 2-0.
Allegri has moved on to another team, but Juve’s success against Dortmund and Madrid prove they’re capable of similar tactical savviness. A canny defense is supported by two of the best all around midfielders on the planet, Vidal and Pogba. In Pirlo Juve have the Italian equivalent of a quarterback in American football: an accurate distributor of long attacking balls. He’ll be aiming at two of the best counterattacking players outside of Barcelona, Morata and Tevez. Taken all together, this looks like the kind of team that could win against the one-dimensional Barca of years past.
If there’s a way to overcome Messi, and that’s a big ‘if’, the key for Juve will be to deny Barca their new, extra counterattacking gear. To that end they’ll have to make sure they’re not gifting Barca’s forwards space in behind the defense. Sitting deep and keeping the pressure on any midfield passers will be vital. Morata and Tevez will have to contribute to the defense by pressing high up the pitch while also looking for out balls whenever they come. If Juve can keep this tight and well-organized, there’s every possibility of forcing Barca to revert to a more familiar game, a game Allegri has proven he knows how to win.
Once again, though: Messi. It feels inevitable that however complex and nuanced this game will be, it will ultimately come down to a single impossible pass or a marvelously constructed goal from the Argentine magician. Mascherano put it best when asked about the key to his team winning against Bayern Munich in the semi-finals: “We have Messi.”
Final Scoreline Prediction: Barcelona 3 – 2 Juventus