UEFA Champions League 2021/22: How Ancelotti engineered Real Madrid’s 3-1 triumph over PSG – tactical analysis

Just over three weeks after LaLiga leaders Real Madrid were dominated by their Ligue 1 counterparts PSG at Le Parc des Princes in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League Round-of-16 tie, Los Blancos managed to turn the tide at Estadio Santiago Bernabéu to ensure that the most successful team in the history of European football’s elite competition advance to the next round over a PSG side that will now be forced to wait at least one more year before getting their hands on the Champions League trophy for what would be the very first time.

PSG could have taken more than just a one-goal lead into the second leg and probably deserved to do so based on the quality of their performance at home. However, in reality, that wasn’t the case. They only won the first leg 1-0 — a dangerous lead to take to the Bernabéu — and were punished by a clinical Karim Benzema on the night for not making more of their opportunities on the 15th of February.

Real didn’t dominate possession here, ending the game with just 47.23% of it, nor did they dominate by hitting PSG hard and fast on the counter. Real made the most of their time on the ball executing their plan well while playing in a slightly more urgent fashion than PSG played, which was perhaps somewhat influenced by the fact they were trailing the visitors coming into this game and ended up conceding first in the second leg in the first half. Real were more aggressive than their opponents without the ball, ending the game with a PPDA of 9.36 compared to PSG’s 14.93, and this aggressive pressing was vital in ensuring victory on Wednesday evening. This helped Real to take more than twice as many shots (21) than their opponents (10) while accumulating a far greater xG (3.31) than PSG (0.99) at the same time.

This tactical analysis piece breaks down three key elements of Real Madrid’s strategy and tactics that helped them to overcome PSG on Wednesday. I hope that this tactical analysis clarifies some of the key details of Ancelotti’s set-up and shines a light on how the veteran Italian coach engineered what’s sure to be a memorable victory for Los Blancos over Les Parisiens.

Calm, patient build-up and ball progression

I’ll kick off this tactical analysis by looking at Real Madrid’s performance in the early possession phases when looking to get out of their own half and into the opposition’s half. It’s well documented that PSG’s star-studded front three of Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi and Neymar, for all of their immense talent on the ball, offers very little without the ball. Madrid exploited this poor defensive work excellently on Wednesday, turning this weakness in PSG’s system into a key deciding factor in their 3-1 win.

As already mentioned, Real didn’t counter-attack extremely quickly and aggressively, instead preferring to build quite patiently after regaining possession in deeper areas, similar to how they operated when building regular attacks on Wednesday.

Take figure 1, for example. Here, Real Madrid have just regained possession on the edge of their box from Mbappé, putting a stop to a potentially dangerous attack led by one of world football’s most threatening dribblers and allowing Real to start thinking about an attack of their own. In this situation and situations like this one on Wednesday, Real made an effort to bide their time, not rush forward and instead play a few passes to calm play down before looking to go forward, aiming to build slowly and keep a low tempo which suited them. In this way, some calm, patient, ‘negative’ passing helped Real to create what they identified in preparation for this game as being better attacks for them.

As we move on into figure 2, we see how PSG start to drop off and regroup in a structured block rather than counter-press, which was another key factor behind these Madrid tactics. Real knew they’d be afforded the time and space to calm play down after regaining possession like this because, with PSG’s shape being headed by the aforementioned front three that’s not exactly known for their defensive work, the aggressive counter-press wasn’t going to come. On this occasion in figure 2, Benzema shifted from the centre out to the right-wing to give his teammates an option out wide where he’d identified some space to attack and a long ball from the back found him. The passer had plenty of time and space to pick out this pass due to the lack of high pressure from PSG.