The first game of this weekends Bundesliga action saw Schalke take on Mainz with both teams at opposite ends of the Bundesliga table. Schalke were looking to build on their impressive start to the season under new boss David Wagner; while Mainz, following a poor start to the season, were looking to build on last weeks win and start a climb up the table. In the end, it was Schalke who got the win and climbed temporarily into the Champions League places, and in this tactical analysis we will look at what went wrong for Mainz, and one common theme in Schalkes offensive tactics which exploited an ongoing weakness in the Mainz team.
Lineups
Mainz lined up in their usual 4-3-1-2 diamond while Schalke played in a 4-2-3-1 shape, often pressing with two up front. Mainz simply lacked quality technically for the vast majority of the game, struggling to win offensive duels and struggling to create chances as a result of their shape, as I will move onto in this analysis.
Schalke press
Schalkes press was effective in the game in limiting Mainzs build-up, and Mainzs lack of quality and poor shape in the build-up also helped this. Below we can see an example of Schalkes press, with two players up front pressing the centre-backs while the wide midfield players press Mainzs high full-backs. Mainz therefore often had no options other than to play the ball down the line to the marked full-back, or go long. When played to the full-back, this forced them to win offensive duels within their own half which of course is risky. The number six within the diamond, Pierre Kunde, as well as Mainzs whole diamond midfield, did a poor job of offering an inside pass which we can see below where a massive space is left for an inside pass but no Mainz players occupy it. This situation leads to Mainz losing the ball.
We can see a very similar situation below, where a
