Daryl's Notebook: What I learned from the Champions League's matchweek 2
Ahh...it's "The Champions" time! It is time to get excited whenever that anthem is played across various European stadiums!
It is another week of the Champions League and the feisty clashes are coming in hot and spicy this week! While I will not be watching six matches like the first matchweek (because that is just too many matches!), I will be covering four matches with two from the Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning group of matches, and another one from the Wednesday evening/Thursday morning sets. Let’s get into it, shall we?
Arsenal 2-0 PSG
Reason for choosing: From what I have heard and read, Arsenal looked like a completely different team this season with their pragmatic approach when they come up against bigger or similar strength teams. This fascinates me since it departs heavily from what Arteta wanted to do when he first came in, but I am intrigued to see if this approach can bring them the trophies that they want and need this season. With PSG, I am interested to see how Luis Enrique’s side would play against top teams, having watched them slightly struggled against a discipline Girona side who are not doing that well in La Liga this season.
Quick thoughts:
Contrast to what I have heard about Arsenal throughout this season that they seem to be an out-of-possession team, the host looked very interesting in possession. Besides from the usual ‘playing out with a back three’, there seemed to be a lot of rotation in midfield and front line with players seemingly roamed from their positions quite often. Most notably, you can find left-back Riccardo Calafiori moving centrally and replacing one of the midfielders while either Declan Rice or Thomas Partey would move to the left of the defence. At times, when either Kai Havertz or Leandro Trossard dropped deep, Calafiori would even make forward runs to support the winger duo.
Against Arsenal’s 4-4-2 out of possession shape, PSG still looked quite confident when they had the ball as they looked to move Arsenal’s defensive block side-to-side and tried to find spaces inside the half-space areas and out wide. This was supported by the fact that Luis Enrique opted not to start with an out-and-out no.9 like Randal Kolo Muani, but rather with an attacking midfielder up front in Kang-in Lee. With the Korean playing up front, PSG also used rotations to bring their attackers into play by asking Lee to drop deep in possession and allowed either Warren Zaïre-Emery or Désiré Doué to move centrally and attempt runs in behind Arsenal’s centre-back pairing. Along with Lee, both Vitinha and João Neves also looked very active as they tried to find pocket of spaces where they could receive the ball, then attempted to play it wide to Achraf Hakimi or Bradley Barcola.
The brilliance of Vitinha needs to be appreciated more! He might not have the physicality to do the defensive work when playing as a #6, but man, is he good with the ball. He looked good whenever he tried to protect the ball under pressure, then used his technicality to navigate his way out of trouble and into pocket of spaces where he was able to make through balls to the attackers. There is a reason why PSG see him as the perfect successor to Marco Verratti.
While he looked quite good in possession, I felt as if Calafiori was Arsenal’s weakest link in defence. He was decent when it came to passive defending (basically making interceptions or picking up loose balls), but he kept losing 1v1 duels against both Barcola and Nuno Mendes and mistimed the ball on a few occasions. PSG knew this as they targeted Arsenal’s left-hand side in the first half, then switched to the right when Mikel Arteta moved the Italian defender to the right for Jakub Kiwior to come in on the left. This also explained why Bukayo Saka had to do a fair bit of defensive work to cover for Calafiori when Arsenal fell back into a mid/low block.
The second half really showcased Arsenal’s out of possession tactics since they sat very deep in a low block and allowed PSG to bring the ball into their half more often. But Arsenal’s 4-4-2 defensive shape provided good coverage when the ball was moved out wide, preventing short combinations being made out on the wings, and blocked the central area to limit any play-through passes from the away side.
Overall: I do agree with Thierry Henry when he said this was a statement win for Arsenal against a top team like PSG. While the French side were not at their best by any means, Arsenal looked like they came in with a plan and executed well. But Arteta’s side need a tougher test if they want to show their credentials and ambitions to win trophies this season. Meanwhile, PSG still felt like they lacked something to be considered as one of the favourites to win the Champions League. Without Kylian Mbappé this season, Enrique has the opportunity to build an actual team, but so far what they have done have not given them enough to compete at the biggest stage of European football.
PSV Eindhoven 1-1 Sporting CP
Reason for choosing: It is a slightly underrated clash since both PSV and Sporting are not particularly considered as big teams, but this clash has the potential to be tactically interesting. Rúben Amorim has done a good job with Sporting Clube over the past few seasons, which explains why he has been linked with various top jobs across Europe. Meanwhile, PSV looked okay in their clash against Juventus on matchweek one. While not too outstanding, I am interested to see what they can do against a similar strength team like Sporting.
Quick thoughts:
Similar to their match against Juventus, PSV continued to show a strong preference to attack down the right-hand side, where most of their talents were present. But with Mauro Júnior starting as PSV’s right-back and Guus Til preferred to move into the right channel, Johan Bakayoko was instructed to move inside more often. Something similar also happened on the left, with Ismael Saibari drifted into the half spaces and allowed Malik Tillman to perform a similar move to Bakayoko’s.
It seemed as if Sporting struggled to create anything during the first 20 minutes of the match, with PSV successfully pushed their attacks back on multiple occasions. At times, the away side committed too players back in an attempt to play through PSV’s press that they left Viktor Gyökeres up front alone and could only find the Swedish striker using long balls. It did not help the Portuguese side that whenever they managed to find a breakthrough, PSV defenders and midfielders would attempt to foul them to stop the attack.
Defensively, Sporting were not very impressive in the first half either. While they looked like they had a pressing shape, their press was not aggressive enough as they left too much time for PSV players to pass through their defensive block and easily entered the final third. At least, they did manage to isolate Luuk de Jong up front and limited PSV from creating dangerous chances. The goal that they conceded came from an unlucky clearance by Zeno Debaest and Jerdy Schouten just struck the ball well to leave it out of Franco Israel’s reach.
Overall, the first half was cagey at best. PSV started the half well with a few good chances that they should have taken, but they looked more or less similar to the PSV that I watched against Juventus. On the other side, Sporting looked like they were constantly the second-best team in the tie. They could not grow into the half as the defenders made individual mistakes left and right while the attackers could not link up with each other and create a noticeable chance.
Once again, PSV started hot in the early minutes of the second half with a few dangerous chances. But just like the first half, they disappointed the home fans by not converting those chances into goals, especially de Jong’s one-on-one opportunity. And Sporting…well, still no improvement from them during the early minutes of the half.
The pitch was definitely slippery as more players just tripped over themselves and led to unwanted mistakes being made. Sporting felt it more since substitute Eduardo Quaresma slipped and missed a good chance to equalise the match. But they still managed to make up for Quaresma’s missed opportunity with a good goal from Daniel Bragança.
Overall: PSV should rue their missed chances because they had more opportunities to score and just put the match to bed. Yet their players squandered those chances, and they only came out of a cagey match with a point. Meanwhile, Sporting were not very good and did not impress me too much, especially since I had hoped to watch good football from Amorim’s side. Maybe if they had played on a better surface, they might have done a bit more, but they can feel happy with a point against PSV.
Benfica 4-0 Atlético Madrid
Reason for choosing: I do not want to say that this match was my second choice even though I wanted to watch the Salzburg vs Brestois clash. But waking up to this match’s result along with Brestois’ win was a surprise for me, so I tried to find the full matches for both, yet I am now ending up with the clash at Estadio da Luz so it is definitely the second-best choice for me.
Quick thoughts:
Straight off from the first minutes, Benfica showed their position as the host and took control of the match. They also immediately noticed that Atlético’s defensive setup aimed to overload and prevent them from playing through the block, so they shifted to attack down the flanks using overloads and look to isolate Atlético’s wing-backs out into 1v1 situations. It seemed as if the host noticed that they could increase pressure on left centre-back Reinildo Mandava and left wing-back Samuel Lino, which meant Benfica showed their preference to exploit that flank in particular with Ángel di Maria’s presence. As such, it did not come as a surprise when the host quickly came close to scoring from Vangelis Pavlidis’ header and, eventually, found that opening goal through Kerem Aktürkoğlu.
What surprised me more was how flexible Benfica were with both their in possession and out of possession shape. On paper, they lined up in a 4-1-2-3 but when they controlled the ball, left back Álvaro Carreras stayed deep to form a back three and right back Alexander Bah pushed further up the pitch, which changed their shape to a 3-2-5. In defence, the host had to counter a similar shape from Atlético and chose to form a back five with Aktürkoğlu following right wing-back Marcos Llorente and Nahuel Molina tightly. Their out of possession shape helped them shut off attacks down their left, forcing most attacks in the first half to go down the right, where Bah and Fredrik Aursnes’ presence made them look stronger defensively.
Diego Simeone’s side already seemed frustrated that they were not able to create chances inside the first half, and conceding a penalty just three minutes into the second half definitely did not help them by any means. As Atlético continued to push forward to look for goals, they left plenty of space behind, which Benfica utilised on multiple occasions to counter and threaten Jan Oblak’s goal with dangerous chances.
The away side simply just did not show up for this match. They looked lost and could not keep up with Benfica for the majority of the half. While they were not able to create anything when they had the ball, the defence and midfield kept making individual mistakes by conceding two penalties and allowed the opposing attacking players got past them. Conor Gallagher was definitely underwhelming since I could not remember anything in particular about the Englishmen when Atlético had the ball, and he conceded a penalty by fouling Zeki Amdouni and loosely marked Bah to allow the Danish defender to score Benfica’s third goal.
Overall: I was slightly impressed with Benfica since they looked like they were in total control and managed to neuralise, basically, everything that Atlético were trying to do. But the fact that Simeone’s side were always chasing the game and looked frustrating for the majority of the match also contributed to that. I came into the match knowing that Atlético would not play an attractive style because, it’s Simeone, duh, but I did not expect them to be that bad!