Mourinho's tactics against Guardiola

As many soccer fans know, the core of Barcelona’s possession soccer is keeping the distance between players. And the first step in maintaining such space is to raise the defensive line, as Josep Guardiola mentioned in his column. On the basis of the raised defense line, an organic position change between the mid-fielders and forwards, short-pass and the ability to get out of the pressure are what he pursues and his soccer.

However, it was hard to find their usual play at the today’s game against Real Madrird, especially in the first half. Even though the Former Inter-Milan manager Rafael Benitez told CNN that Barcelona player’s inactive movement need to be blamed, the more essential reason is Jose Mourinho brought a new tactic widening the space among the players of Barcelona. The first thesis of their soccer are being free from pressure and comprehension of the space, and their basic formula is to make less movement of the players than the flow of the ball with the increasing number of pass so that they are able to minimize the energy used up, that enables Barcelona to maintain their possession soccer even in the very end of the game. But in this game, due to the extended distance, Barcelona consistently played with a passive movement and could not cope with the widened space as well. That’s why they seemed not to take a lively movement as Benitez said.

Then what did Mourinho do to tear down the solid space of Barcelona? Although many broadcast media focused on merely the positioning of three defensive mid-fielders ; Kepler Pepe, Xabi Alonso, Sami Khedira, its purpose was to block the passes of the Barcelona players and to make use of the enlarged space of the line of Barcelona players so that they are able to launch swift attacks with ease. At this point, invisible 9 role of Ozil was successful. but Mourinho’s tactic was not perpect either; Barcelona still had about two-third of possession, and failure of making goal in the first half made Real Madrid only focus on the defense throughout the second half due to the reduced stamina like ‘Anti Football’ some people mentioned. Consequently it means Pep had an initiative of the match.

There are still two more games ahead. Would Guardiola prepare the Plan-B for the next matchup? What is Mourinho thinking about?