El Clasico Tactical Analysis
How Real Madrid dominated Barcelona in El Clasico
Real Madrid came into El Clasico two points ahead of Barcelona in the table, which meant this was a massive match for them to potentially take a five point lead at the top.
It was the second big test in Spain for Xabi Alonso with the first not going according to plan.
Real Madrid were throttled by their neighbors Atletico Madrid 5-2, but had won every other match this season.
Barcelona embarrassed Real Madrid last season winning all four meetings including the Copa del Rey and Spanish Super Cup finals.
There needed to be a response from Real Madrid in football’s greatest rivalry and they got it on Sunday.
Let’s take a look into how Real Madrid ended their losing streak in El Clasico in dominating fashion.
First Half
Barcelona not surprisingly were going with a very aggressive man to man press early on.
Real Madrid’s press has greatly improved over the weeks and right off the bat they were pressing Barcelona’s build up high. Alonso was instructing Huijsen to follow Yamal when he dropped deep if Álvaro Carreras was aggressively jumping on Barca’s fullbacks.
You can even see later on in the first half when Barcelona tried drop multiple forwards in Real Madrid’s backline followed them every time.
After a penalty was VAR’d off and a goal got called offsides, Kylian Mbappe finally hit the back of the net.
The high line got exposed, but I think there is an important thing to remember about playing a high line. If teams like Real Madrid are given time and space on the ball to pick out whatever pass they want, it’s never going to work.
You have to pressure the ball relentlessly to take the pressure off your back line.
Here Jude Bellingham was freely able to drop in, Barca doesn’t close him down and he played Mbappe in behind to make it 1-0.
The high line is kind of funny to look at sometime, but again one ball in behind and they are toast because they aren’t pressuring the ball.
29:15- Barcelona’s defending on the back line, specifically on set pieces was really poor in this match.
One of Real Madrid’s best chances of the first half came after a set piece when they got a 4 v 3 overload on the back post where Balde and Garcia miscommunicated on who was defending Huijsen.
He gets a free run and forces a good save from Szczęsny.
Barcelona held a majority of the possession in this match and tilted the field on Real Madrid at 63.5%.
Real Madrid were sitting in a mid to low block for a majority of the match and were sort sticking to man to man principles.
Barcelona were moving the ball side to side to find space in the middle. Here they drew Tchouaméni over when he needed to cover Balde, which frees up space on top of the box for Torres to get a shot off.
Barcelona equalized off a high turnover. You can see Arda Guler gets surrounded by the Barcelona press and held onto the ball to long, which allowed them to pick it off, make a couple of quick passes for a Fermin Lopez goal.
Real Madrid got their second indirectly from a set piece. They played it out wide to Vinicius Jr, who beat Kounde to the byline to send in a looping cross to the back post where Real Madrid have Barcelona out numbered.
Éder Militão is able to win the header and play it back across the six yard box to a wide open Bellingham who taps it in.
Set Pieces made the difference for Real Madrid in this match. Of their 2.84 xG from non-penalty shots, 1.41 of that came from set pieces.
Second Half
Once Real Madrid had the lead they were sitting back in a midblock, but it was more man oriented than anything else.
Barcelona could not figure it out and couldn’t pull guys out of position to create space for others. It was almost as if they came into the match with a tactical plan to play against a zonal structure and Xabi Alonso threw a completely different plan at them that they weren’t prepared for.
For example, Camavinga was following Rashford wherever he went, so that he never was isolated on Valverde.
You’d get situations like this where Real Madrid would be defending six in their back line to make sure Barcelona wasn’t overloading them.
The only free man here is Eric Garcia.
One of the concepts Xabi Alonso loves is “overload to isolate” you can see here that Real Madrid are trying to overload the left side of the pitch, which draws in a lot of Barcelona’s defenders.
Huijsen plays a switch ball to Valverde in acres of space. Valverde almost is able to play Diaz in behind for a goal, but it got called offsides.
Cannot talk enough about how good of a job Real Madrid did at cutting off central passing lanes in the final third.
You can see from Barcelona’s pass map that Fermin Lopez was drifting the right half space to try and combine with Lamine Yamal.
image via The Analyst
Anytime Barcelona tried to overload the middle, Real Madrid had it covered.
When the match got into the dire moments, Real Madrid hunkered down in a very low compact defensive block.
Real Madrid was outstanding in the second half in limiting Barcelona’s chances because they didn’t have a shot with an xG rating over 0.15.
image via fbref.com
Conclusion
It doesn’t get talked about enough the job Carreras did on Lamine Yamal.
He only took two shots that amounted to 0.03 xG, was 4/8 on successful dribbles, created only two chances, and had just three touches in the penalty area.
You can see from his heatmap he spent virtually no time in the penalty area.
Lamine Yamal Heatmap vs. Real Madrid
image via SofaScore
What also was amazing is how ineffective Barcelona was in the final third.
They entered the final third 54 times, but were only able to have 10 box entries. In addition to that, Barcelona averaged 68% possession, but Real Madrid out touched them in the penalty area 34 to 17.
Alonso came with the plan of having Real Madrid play in transition and try to generate chances via high turnovers.
The Real Madrid high press ended up forcing Barcelona into a lot of errors with five of those directly leading to a Real Madrid shot.
image via markstatsbot on X
Real Madrid won this match out of possession, which is not something we would have said after the Club World Cup or after their 5-2 defeat to Atletico Madrid.
Barcelona took 15 shots and only created 1.1 xG in the match.
You can see from their shot map that nine of their 15 shots came from outside the box.
image via The Analyst
The win puts Real Madrid five points ahead of Barcelona who have now lost three of their last five matches in all competitions.
How Real Madrid won this match out possession and playing in transition is particularly relevant considering they play Liverpool in the Champions League on November 4th.