Chelsea earned a great advantage in the first leg of the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals against Porto, securing a couple of away goals and raising the hopes of qualifying to the next round. After an intense meeting with a lot of activity in front of Chelsea’s goal, they still managed to control the game and take advantage of their opportunities and smartly tilt the scales in their favour.
The Londoners stayed compact and invited the play in their own half but only to smartly lure Porto in and create goalscoring opportunities. They would sometimes fall in their own trap with Dragões always being on the front foot and looking to recover the ball, but a good defensive re-organisation and a strong goalkeeper performance saved them from trouble.
Porto did also struggle with their accuracy and while they created many chances in front of the goal, only four of them were actually on target and threatened Edouard Mendy.
Chelsea followed Real Madrid, Manchester City and PSG with a win and joined the advantage club for the second legs.
This tactical analysis examines what went wrong for Porto in their attacking efforts and how Chelsea had the patience to wait for the perfect opportunities to create chances. We will explain what in both teams’ tactics led to the final result in the Blues’ favour.
Line-ups and formations
Sérgio Conceição set his team up in a 4-1-4-1 formation keeping their strategy of focusing on the attacking actions and creating as many opportunities as possible. Their goal was covered by Agustín Marchesín while the backline consisted of Zaidu Sanusi, Pepe, Chancel Mbemba and Wilson Manafá. Marko Grujić had a deeper midfield position while supported by Otávio and Mateus Uribe centrally. Luis Díaz and Jesús Corona who didn’t meet the expectations in the game provided width with Moussa Marega operating as a lone striker.
They didn’t have the usual success when attacking through the flanks thanks to Reece James’ and Ben Chilwell’s defensive contribution out wide. That’s why most of Porto’s successful efforts came through the middle.
They were moving w
