Alvaro Cervera: Why he is the right man to take Real Oviedo to La Liga – tactical analysis

Alvaro Cervera was announced two weeks ago as the new Real Oviedo head coach, after his long and fantastic spell at Cadiz where he was sacked last season in January. El Gafa, as hes commonly known, has a large experience inside the low-categories of Spain. Hes right now living life at another great football club and another encounter in the second division.

The 57-year-old lived a truly heroic spell with Cadiz, which was his most recent job at football. However, his story with the Yellow Submarine started in 2016 in the third division of Spain, where he qualified for the play-offs in the 4th place of their group, to then win the promotion to the second tier. A massive streak of results gave Cervera in his first season with Cádiz in the second division, a play-off spot where they draw 1-1 against Tenerife in the semi-final, and the canaries get to the final because of they were in a better position in the league.

Three seasons later, Cadiz get the direct promotion as they finished second in the league table in a fantastic season which saw them picking 69 points and only staying behind the first place for a point. After they were eliminated against Tenerife three years later, being out of a promotion spot for two consecutive seasons, Cervera did what most people thought impossible and promoted his side from the third-tier to La Liga, one of the top-five European leagues of the world, three matchweeks before the end of the campaign. The humble but gigantic squad finally were going to play in the top tier of their country.

This tactical analysis piece will be a short team scout report of Alvaro Cervera and his tactics at Cadiz. It will also be an analysis of what he can expect inside the Real Oviedo context and what he has done in his start at the club.

Cervera pragmatic playing-style

The Spaniard head coach likes to sit in a very deep and low block that is very rigid and looks to solidify the central areas, overloading them and being very coordinated in his movements to not be that separated from the defensive line. His first season at La Liga was a big display of this, being the team with less possession per match and the highest PPDA (Passes Allowed per Defensive Action), averaging almost 20 passes per 90.

This can only define one football style: A very pragmatic and defensive one that prefers to close down spaces and block the lines, to being a propositive and proactive football team that likes to play usually with the ball at their feet. However, Cervera found the way to sit in 12th place in their first campaign at La Liga, with 44 points and famous matches like their 2-1 home victory against Barcelona, 0-1 away wins against Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao or another 2-1 home win versus Valencia. It was a really emotional and big season that ended on a high.

As we can see in the picture below, these were the formations used by Alvaro Cervera in the 2020/21 season with Cádiz, where he normally deploy a 4-4-2 on the pitch, which can also translates to a low block inside a very traditional shape that pragmatic managers looked to play when they prefer to defend rather than attack in the major part of the game, as well as attracting completely their rival to their own third, to then run in rapid attacking transitions.

Cádiz didnt show signs of a team that can be aggressive in their decisions when playing in a compact low block. No player from the central areas looks to jump off their line and almost everyone didnt apart from the striker partnership looking to steal the ball with their runs. Besides that, Cerveras team looks to be static and solid with rigid movements, forcing teams to play non-dangerous passes going side-to-side and not breaking lines as they block all available zones on the pitch.

Against Real Madrid, in one of the biggest victories in their La Liga debut season, we can see how they used their 4-4-2, narrowing wingers to midfield, looking to accumulate more than six players, with strikers in front of them to create a pressing trap to the outside where the wingers and full-backs would go close to suffocate, making the rival to go back.

In the play below, Madrid tried to break lines connecting with