Foreign. Hello and welcome to the Double Pivot, the world's most agreeable soccer athletics podcast. I am Michael Kayley and there was a football game yesterday. It was a really, really, really freaking good football game.
So we're just gonna talk about it because I'm still like processing, I'm still emotionally coming down and I'm joined by my goodman. I think he's having the same experience. Yeah, man, it was, it was an unreal game. The Music nine as well as subscribe to Happiest Podcasts Basking the glory of the game in the Discord.
I had fun in particular because my son invited two of his friends over to watch the game and I let them comment on the Discord as well under my account in the live games channel. And they got so hyped. Their comments just eventually were all like, bro, Barcelona, gotta lock in, bro. Vamos, vamos.
Yeah, I mean, I guess we'll figure out how to say words about this as we go, but man, what absolutely cannot happen for drama. One way I like to talk about games, we do these sort of post match podcasts is to try to identify like tactical phases of the game. One team is doing one thing, another team adjusted to do something else. And none of these hundred initially had tactical phases, which usually suggests like it's not that exciting a game or that like there's just one dynamic.
And rather what this game had were like physical faces. There were periods of time when one team could outsprint the other team and out here sound really quick. I would also say that oftentimes when you get games descriptively like that, games where there aren't phases, games where you have a hard time identifying things changing and pieces moving, you are often looking at a game that is not being played at that high level. Yeah.
And this, if you take a game that you watch, which is like derpy and scrambly and fun, but not at a high level, and you elevate the players on the field to all be playing at an extremely high level, but in the same manner. That's what you get. Like this is, that's this game. This game was played at an extremely high level, but it was like an extremely high physical level with tactics that were aimed at being simple but high leverage and effective.
And that just means that's Hansi Flick because simple tactics without a lot of variation, but designed to be highly effective with a specific set of players. That's Hansi Flick. And you don't go into watching Hansi Flick football. Certainly with this Barcelona, you don't Expecting to see lots of tactical variation.
Yeah. And to the extent that they start doing different things, that they try to do different things. Look, there were a couple of things late when Lewandowski comes on, Raphinha drops very, very deep so that he's the guy pumping the ball forward, for example, like, you know, they have to start Gomez right back and he's like in the counterattack in a couple of, like, in a dramatic way a couple of times, including for his goal. So there's like little things.
Right. But to the extent that they do variation, it almost always comes down to what is Pedri gonna do with the ball at his feet, not what is the tactical plan that Pedri will execute. Yeah, there was one little calculation I think I saw, but I think it's good to sort of get there over time. So this game opens.
Inter get the first goal from like 10 minutes of dominance. Yeah, they're very good. Barcelona are just going to compress the pitch, win the ball. When they get the ball, the ball moves forward very quickly from a passing midfielder to a winger.
And most of the time that winner will be Lamine. In this game and in the first leg, that midfielder was Lamin. Often than it usually is, usually Barca are more like 70, 30 lamin, rafinha, sometimes 60, 40 lamin rafenia with their ball production. And these games are like 80, 20, 90, 10.
It was just Lamin, Lamine, Lamine, Lamine all the time. And I don't have a grasp of whether to some degree that was a function of Ferran Torres for Lewandowski and to what degree it was a plan and to what degree it was just kind of something that happened. I do think that there's a thing where, like, Lewandowski stays central and Ferran Torres likes to run into the channel and specifically the channel on Lamin Malpsai. And I do wonder if that sort of like either actively or passively, intentionally or not, encourages that imbalance.
This led to Lamin doing a lot more on the ball than he usually does over the two legs. He was 98 of 131 passing hit. And the first thing I notice about that is that for guy who's on the ball that much, he's losing the ball a lot. He is being super, super aggressive with the ball when he is playing it, and he's on the ball a lot more than he usually does.
In Barcelona matches this season, he's averaging about like 35 or 47 passes. He's aggressive for Barcelona. This comes out to 42:56 per night. So it's a significant increase in touches.
And then obviously he was also just trying to beat his man constantly, especially in the second leg. And so his this season he's like, you know, one of the take on monsters in football. He's averaging 10 attempted take ons with 50% of them, five of them successful over this season in La League for Barcelona over these two legs he attempted 38 take ons with 20 successful. That's like 8.5 out of 16 per night.
So he was just doing so much more. The interesting thing is that in the first leg he was on the ball quite a bit. He passed it quite a bit more in the first leg. He attempted 70 passes the first leg.
I was describing this as almost like a Trent Alexander Arnold kind of matched on the ball and playing home run passes all the time. But he only attended 13 take ons in that match. Only this match, 25 attempted take on passes attempted goes down to 58. So he was the core of the attack, but he was much more of a dribbler in this game versus much more of a creative passer in the first match.
Yeah, and I think all of these dynamics are to some degree indicative of interplaying quite well defensively with their back three backpack. You think about the Eric Garcia goal in this match, which comes from just a really well executed out and out counterattack from Barcelona, off as a piece and want to do that a lot. They want to be scoring in transition. The fact that they are insane in terms of how many bodies they get forward I think can be a little deceptive in terms of what their final third attack is.
Because if they have to recycle possession in the final third, they are not doing complicated pep esque stuff to try to break you down and get good shots. They are not. The thing that they want to be doing is not breaking down set defenses. And when confronted with a set defense, their solution is like, give it to the meaning while I'm letting him do something.
And to a lesser extent, Rafina. I think part of the imbalance in this match and the tie on the whole in terms of Yamal versus Rafinha is they're like equally distributed in transition. But in the final third, Yamal is much more of the make something happen guy and Rafinha is much more of the get on the end of something guy. It's a more delineated set of skills and they spent a lot of time in controlled possession in the final third because Inter did a very good job of not getting Unsettled defensively by the waves of counter pressure and attack and blunting that most of the time.
Yeah. The first minute of the match, Lamine plays the Lamine pass into Faron. Yes. And he really didn't get a chance to pull that off again.
He plays. He has one more chance where he plays it with his right foot from narrow on like a semi counterattack. And Faron doesn't get there either. Although it was a real treaty.
But there's a lot of it. Yeah. I think that a big story of this game is how massive Bastilli was. Bastili was because Bastili as the left center back, like he's the guy that pass has to go around and he was in position to make that pass difficult.
And then he also just like stonewalled Lamine a bunch of times. He's still the best defender in the world. I feel this very strongly. Yeah, I think that's pretty clear.
All of that being said, Barcelona created a lot in this match, but they didn't create that much in the first half. No, they did not. It was all like. I thought Inter played a tremendous.
Inter was spectacular for Kevin and the non penalty action. Teams without even so like that speaks to how good Barcelona are. Inter held them by making a ton of plays defensively, especially Bastioni, but not just Bastioni were making plays and making it and just stopping Barca around the penalty area in places where they want to play. And Inter kind of don't really want to play.
Like Barca got into those places and then Inter beat them. The thing is that Inter were really good breaking against Barcelona when they got the opportunity to. That's what was so good about this performance. Right.
This was a match in the first half where Inter, when they turned Barcelona over, created good chances. And for those goals, you know, the first leg, Inter's two goals in the first half were quite fluky. I mean, there were set pieces, they were good chances. They were set pieces, they were not.
They were not able to effectuate counterattacks off turnovers in the way they were in this match. It's kind of interesting talking about the lean pass that happened in the first minute. Inter get that done once in the first minute in the first leg and then really kind of can't pull it off again for most of the match. Yep.
And in this match they were much, much better. And what they were better at was again, it was the same thing. What they wanted to do was when they won the ball out of a mid block, when they won the ball in Barcelona really extended. They wanted to settle possession first and then play the ball that beats the high line.
Because when you settle possession, Hansi Flick's teams compress the field. They don't just chase the counter press, they also compress the field to get a second round of pressing on. You going to compile risk. The first goal comes just off a dictatorial turnover and just a very effective counterattack.
Right off that turnover, that was more of a gut than the other ones are. The second half though, like Barcelona were just Barcelona were. I felt like both teams played very, very well in that second half in terms of executing the thing that they do at high level. The fact that Inter gave up three goals, it's a little bit unfair.
I mean, I think the other important part of this is Inter's lineup. Yeah. Because we talked about this in our preview. We talked about how we just weren't sure if we're going to be able to see Inter execute at the hot level.
They can because Taram clearly couldn't run in the first leg. And lag. Tara went off and looked like Hamster answers. And Demarco is clearly recovering and can't go 90 minutes.
And Dumfries is recovered from injury, but probably can run. And on top of that, their midfielders, they just Beastline can't really run. Yes. So how are they going to pull this off?
And for the first 30 minutes, Lantaro was just running. He was great. I don't know what they put in his legs. After 30 minutes though, he drops off.
And Thuram was hobbling to begin with and he dropped off a bunch too. And so I do think that part of the story is the first 20 minutes of the second half, Inter just didn't have the legs to get out. Unlike against other teams, if you don't have the legs to get out, Barcelona are just going to keep challenging you on the ball. Yes.
Right. You don't get that breather. Right. You don't get the.
Oh, yeah. We can't really counterattack, but we strung six passes together so now we have sustained possession. You always need to have an outball at the end of settling possession. That is the thing that Barcelona will give up.
And so if you can't get in behind, you know, you're just going to continue under pressure. And this, you know, it's not an accident in my mind that the team got better again than when Alteretti comes in because he is significantly worse than Latin Martinez and Marcus Tarao. But he could run when he came on the field and it made a real Difference. Yeah.
And then also at 79 minutes, they bring in for Tessian Zhilinsky. Yes. For Lucario, for Tessi in particular. And of course, obviously they won't go out of time that curses.
He in particular interprets his midfield role to include getting into the box to score goals in a way that none of the starting three do. But he just physically can't get there anymore. He might be like, ideally I'd like to be there, but like, dude, my legs. But none of the starters do and fortress he does.
And that makes a difference to how Jet la as well. So first half, Barza dominate possession, but it's 66, 33. So important part of this game, I think that you need to understand and I think people watching it got this. But then like the secondary commentary often like just likes to play with memes and concepts rather than the game itself.
Inter are an Italian soccer team. This is true. Inter had only 33% possession in the first half. Inter were playing exceptionally exciting, open, attacking football in the first half.
Like that's why the game was so good. Barcelona forces you into that to a certain degree. But Inter also chose. They steered into the skid.
They chose to play super high, Ethel. That was why they were exhausted. And then for the first 20 minutes of the second half, basically up until the, up until the midfield subs, possession is like 78, 22 Barcelona. And that is Inter was still trying to play out, but they weren't able to.
And so Barcelona were totally in control for that period of time. Like that's the period of time where they got the two goals. And I wanted to start talking about the two goals because they're not exactly what you would expect as this Barcelona team's goals. And the first one, look, it's counterattack, right?
It's a counterattack with Eric Garcia. From my back training game, it's a three. It's like a very pure three on two. They break out from defending a set piece like it's not uniquely Barcelona esque, right?
But it is sort of of a piece, right? Like they relentlessly tried to counterattack with possession in, in those moments in a way which is sort of distinctly germ, right? Like they're, they're not. Those counterattacks don't happen because they're playing the ball long off the field to somebody who they left high.
There is an exchange of three or so passes to break out at the edge of their penalty area. That creates that counterattack. And so in the first counter attack, the fact that it is Eric Garcia getting forward from fullback, that does it is like is interesting. I think it's notable that it was the second goal is also a cross and also a cross with an unusual player getting on the end of it.
What they talk about with Barcelona is one of the ways that Barcelona do have like a bit more or less of attacking gear. The main way that they can scale up or scale down the amount of attacking they're doing is that for the most part, their midfielders don't get forward into the penalty. They don't do a ton of third man running from the midfield. They expect like they compress the picks, they go nuts.
But the attack really like super concentrates. The penalty area touches in Lamine Raphinha and the striker Igowamowski here, charact Torres. And as Barcelona pushed and opened up more, the thing that they did do was try to get Olmo or a full back into the penalty area. So Martin Garcia and Olmo were getting the penalty area a lot.
And this makes sense. If you end up in the final third, you end up doing a lot of. We just have to get someone, some tricky guy on the ball. He's gonna do something cool.
What they end up doing is crossing a lot. And if he's only aiming any Ferran porous, it's not gonna work. And that's the only reason that I think angel or he'll defend themselves in the first half was often they were crossing the Ferran Taurus and Ferrari Taurus is gonna lose. He won one against any of those center backs.
And the thing about that set, the goal where like daniellmo ends up very, very open from a very, very classic position to the head back across Golan's net is hedry puts that ball on a dime from an angle that he's not supposed to be able to do it. Yeah, like there's a temptation to be like, what are you doing defensively? And I get that temptation. But like, part of what makes Pedrick great is he breaks physics in that moment.
And I don't know, I don't think you're supposed to be defending that ball on that trajectory in that moment. So that's the second goal. And so like, that is how Barcelona did make a small amount of adjustment, which is just opening the throttle more. And it's funny, they do have an option to open the throttle more.
Yes, we've had. They really did. And they were able to keep the pressure on. And then at.
At 71, the first set of subs come in and at 79, the next set of subs come in after that, Inter are once again trading punches with them for the rest of regular time. Yeah, like the Rafinha goal is not against the want to play. Exactly. But by the time that that goal happens, Inter had a couple of really good moves themselves in a way they hadn't for most of the second half.
Spoiling Zaki deserves a lot of credit because Inter were not trying to defend their way to penalties after Barcelona came back to made a 2 2. And they did a very effective job of creating chances now. So. Right.
So Barcelona and I think that given that Barcelona were creating chances sort of one way before they attack the game and then you have these subs is obviously the right decision by Inter, you know, but it is also a concession to Barcelona. Right. It is a concession that we have to. We can't play the way we want to play.
We have to get into the up. But then they did it really effectively. So, like, I don't know, like, I think it's just credit to Inter, really. Barcelona are.
I didn't take away anything from this game that Barcelona are more or less than I thought they were. I think this over the course of the season that this Barcelona team is better than I thought because of two reasons. One being just how good Lamine is and the other reason being that Hansi Flick's bonkers, perverted tactics are a good fit for this team. And like, in a way that it took some time for me to see it.
And I don't think that like Hansi Flick did this because of this talent. I think Hansi Flick did this because Hansi Flick, this is how he plays. But it actually really works with this super high powered attacking talent and a real lack of quality off ball defensive talent. Yes.
Now, I think that it is worth asking a secondary question about whether the set of tactics has a lower hard ceiling than other sets of tactics. Yep. You know, I sort of look at what Inter were able to accomplish when they were playing well, I think they were very, very hard for saying a 7 6, not only in a 7 6, but a 76 where yon sarma for that is mine for large stretches. But like interpret now.
And I do wonder, like, I do wonder about that. Like I wonder if you're so vulnerable to counterattacks that it leaves you a hard ceiling. My Barcelona question, my Hansi Flick question is the place I come from here is that Jules Kounde is really the only player on this team who is good at defending in the traditional sense of the term. Gavi has been in his career and he may be again when he, like, fully recovers and Kubarsi may become so.
And Kumarsi is young, is good enough at a young age that he sure looks like he's going to become so. But he isn't yet. Right. And Martinez is just like a guy, and Garcia is a passer and Balde is a very, very, very good hanging folk.
Garujo is a guy. Yep. He might be a guy who's kind of the passer. That might be a thing that continues to develop.
But, like, he's okay. And so, you know, if you got a version of Gabi that can run again and play at the level that he was playing before his injuries. And if you went and replaced Martinez with the next coming of pk. Exactly.
If you made those changes, would these tactics work better or would these tactics still be too vulnerable? Because they are asking too much of the defenders? And these tactics, in a way, I think, like, they level up bad defenders more than they get value out of good defenders. Yeah, I go back and forth with that.
I don't know, like, I think a lot about Vincent Co. At City under Pellegrini, who was like an excellent defender who kept getting left on islands helplessly, but would, like, know how to commit fouls at the right moments, at the right times in ways that this Barcelona team does not. Part of what they seem to be lacking to me is the ability to cynically cut down, play, like, in moments where they really, really need it. It's true.
And here we are talking about Gali not being fit. No, absolutely. But like, you go back to the history of Barcelona and under Pep Guardiola, it's Puyolio Olympic, Right. And then as Puyol ages out, he's the anchor and PK is the athlete, basically.
And now PK has to become the anchor of this side. And it took him a solid year to, like, adjust to that role. And there were real questions about whether he could or could not. I think being the anchor on a team with tons of space is really, really hard.
And it's really a unique set of skills, and it is so hard and such a unique set of skills that there's like, one guy in modern football who has to do it right now in terms of, like, that I didn't no longer ask to do it. It's just, it's a role that is so difficult that everybody moves away from it. So I also look like. I don't know how you, like, recruit for that role.
The other thing is, as you're saying, it's not like these teams are doing a lot of complex stuff in the final third to get the ball where they want it to go. It's that they've got Pendry and Le and Pelesto Griffinia. So the ball can just go where you want to go because those guys can do it. And that's just another great fit with pontificate football.
Yeah. Who needs all this positional play crap? Just play great plays. Yeah.
Pedri is a unique challenge. Really interesting because if you remember when we were talking about the first leg and PSG of PSG Arsenal, it might not even be PSG Liverpool Arsenal, where they didn't really exploit Arsenal's like, lack of defenders. Yeah. And what I said basically is like, look, the ball just goes where the attackers are.
There's no setup, attacking structure. There's also no. That's also true of Barcelona. Barcelona, but they had Pedri, who was like an unbelievably good, tactically brained passing play.
It's not just the ability to complete passes. He is so good at putting the ball where it needs to go, dictated by the flow of the game. In a way. Like, Vijay is a very good, like, playmaking, deep lying, central midfielder who can then also get up the field.
But he's not. It's not the same thing. It's a different set of skills. And Pedri is just like one of the best in the world right now.
Yeah. And Pedri's also. One of the things the ball goes where it should go is also because Pedri, while he doesn't really get past 18 yards most of the time in that, like, area from 18 yards to 40 yards from goal. He has freedom to show up literally anywhere.
And he's very good at knowing where the place is he can show up, that he can like get away with his defender, get the ball and then get the ball out to the next place. Like, he's able to see those two steps, right? And the team is set up to like, have the optionality. Right.
Like, the team is set up for, like, Pepe to do what he needs to do to get on the ball. And I'm like, okay, you get to play wherever it goes. Now where this starts to break down is in a compact final third where there's like, if you are not doing sort of prescribed, tactical, complicated stuff, just the amount of bodies can be very hard to break down. And Barcelona become very, very swing the ball side to side until one of the wingers does something.
Now the wingers agree. So it Often works. And like Lamin beats four guys and gets a shot that's better than anything he should be able to get. But they're not getting great shots in those situations.
They're getting lots of shots and they get lots of shots, which means that they're turning ball over a lot of the other operating counterpress. This is the Hansi Flit concept, is that you play very aggressively in those final third situations, which leads to either your Drake players pulling something off or a turnover, which creates another counter press potential transition. Very, very classic Jurgen Klopp lineage. Gang impressing style.
And it's gone out of style. And I think as we talk about, we talked about other reasons it's gone out of style, but damn, is it fun to watch when you got some other players to completely do it. Yeah. And now I guess we should just flip over for like, did we undersell this Inter team?
Because I thought Inter played really well in this tie better than I thought they would. On the whole of this tie. I think Barcelona were a little bit better. Yes.
But not so much better that like, say a goalkeeper playing out of his freaking mind couldn't flip it. Right. And interplaying that close to Barcelona's level was a moderate surprise to me. Yeah, I think that's.
That's right. That's where I am as well. And like, part of it is just like part of this tactics, part of it is just Inter chose a way of playing. Inter have a variety of ways of playing and they chose ways of playing that were the most effective for taking on Barcelona.
Yeah. I thought Samoan Zagi should, you know, had a very, very good semi final. Yep. And like, look, some of it is like, you get to have a very good semi final when the Tara has a comeback.
Right. And they will give you a good half hour. But it's also like, it's a choice to be like, I want that good half hour right off the bat. I'm not gonna save you and bring you off the bench.
Yep. And I thought that was the right choice. He scored. Right.
I did not think it was right choice for the game. And I mean. Right. That's right.
And the red choice clearly seems like the right choice. Like, as I said, the way that Inter likes to play when they get to play their football is with a bunch of complex attacking moves driven by overlaps and underlaps of the wide center backs and the wing backs. And in the performance, a little bit of this, there's a underlap with dumfries that they ran A few times I saw like one run from a wide center back in the game. Bastoni had one really good ball carry, but the wide center backs were like locked to their spots.
They changed the way that they play to match Barcelona, but not in a way that like took away the attacking options they wanted to have. They just treated those attacking options in a different way than using the center back. Win back interplay. I still think that like they're not going to win the final.
I know. Obviously I think wherever they play, they'll go in not favored. I will be more surprised if Inter are this close in the final than I was prepared to be surprised by that against Barcelona because Barcelona are so tactically vulnerable. Yeah.
Even though I don't think Barcelona, like Barcelona are as good as or better than the other teams. They're just a little more vulnerable to this sort of thing. Yeah. And I look forward to what this Barcelona team is going to become.
Obviously we have the groundwork for it. I think it's going to be really interesting what they become. So there's a couple things over the next few years. I'm thinking about Barcelona.
What happens after the London Bowski? Do they replace them with somebody? If so, what profile, you know, how do they want that to work? 2.
Rafina's 28. So the first chapter of this youth movement will be with Rafina. But three years from now he is not going to be part of whatever. Pedri, Yamal and Kbarsi I think are probably the three guys that you're going to look at as the foundation of whatever this is.
There will be other good players that have been there for a long time possibly, but it's those three. So what do they become for the large chunk of their career? How do you build around them? Is it.
Is it going to be played for a while or is that only a few years? I think those are all really, really interesting questions that I'm sort of excited. Yeah. And the things they're gonna figure out very, very soon is what they're doing about Lewandowski, who he had a very good season this season, but it was down a bit.
And then the one thing I wanna mention in this game is like that Lewandowski stuff. I don't know really. Was Flick just bringing him on for like a minute because they were gonna win and he didn't really have a legs because he looked rough. He looked rough and then he like had a really good chance to tie the game.
Like. Yep, he didn't get up high enough. Yeah, he couldn't get up. We'll know this because like classcalls come up, right?
So we'll see. We'll see the minutes that he plays. I've got like a bunch of different questions about Barcelona. Barcelona business question.
You go back over our archive or see our Oddblocks newsletter about this, but there is a lot of questions about exactly how they have there are. I feel broke anymore. But exactly how much money can they spend and then will they spend money smart. I do think that like having young superstar, homegrown guy and to a certain extent guys as the focal point now eases the pressure at bringing in stars.
Yes. Right. Like you are not trying to bring in superstars to lead this team now as you were in the wake of Messi, you are trying to bring in the guys that will make Le Minal. You need the complimentary pieces for Lamine and Pedri and hoping that you need the complex pieces for lame Pedri and RC developers.
Yep. And that is a much, much better place to be. There you go. And we'll be back with more podcast cheers.
Cheers. Y'.