After a 1-3 defeat at home against relegation candidate Alavés, it seemed like Real Betis had hit rock bottom for the season.
The loss saw them drop back into twelfth place in La Liga, just days after Barcelona kicked them out of the Copa del Rey with a hefty 1-5 defeat in the Olímpic.
The entire season had not gone according to plan for manager Manuel Pellegrini and his squad.
In the summer of 2024, multiple cornerstones of Betis’s success over the last few seasons decided to leave the club.
Juan Miranda and Guido Rodríguez, who even left for free, and other players like Ayoze, Chadi Riad, and Nabil Fékir, looked for opportunities elsewhere.
This led to a massive overhaul in the squad, especially on the defensive side, and to a relatively thin squad.
While Pellegrini and his men’s start to the season looked decent enough, as soon as the UEFA Conference League group stage began, the load of games took its toll on the team, and the results dipped.
In the winter transfer window, Assane Diao and Vitor Roque also decided to leave Betis, leaving the team with even more holes to fill in the attack now.
With the signings of Cucho and Antony, the club secured two very good replacements.
With star player Isco returning from injury, the team found its form again, winning their last six matches in La Liga and advancing to the quarter-final in the Conference League.
In this tactical analysis and team report, we will examine the tactical and personal changes that Manuel Pellegrini made to get his team back into shape and how they managed their surge towards the international places in La Liga and the club’s first-ever international trophy.
Manuel Pellegrini Possession-Based Beauty
Looking at Betis over the last couple of years, since Manuel Pellegrini took over in 2020, the team has been exceptionally good on the ball.
Betis is a team that actively wants the ball, plays a lot of passes, and thrives in possession, something that has become a bit of a lost art in La Liga ever since the pandemic.
It all starts with their squad planning.
The club is not signing uber-athletic players who are best at running without the ball or dominating through brute force; they are signing experienced players with quality on the ball.
Every single player in the Betis squad is calm on the ball, has good to great passing ability, and has a high understanding of positional play and movement off the ball in possession, and it shows on the pitch.
Looking at their build-up play deep in their own half, Betis actively involves their goalkeeper and centre-halves in their own box.
In this situation, one fullback, Sabaly on the right, provides a lot of width, with Rodríguez on the left being more towards the inside.
Betis midfielders keep the passing distances short, dropping back to the edge of the box and trying to receive the ball behind the first line of press, drawing the opposing midfielders forward in the process.
What’s very interesting now is that Pellegrini does not have his men trigger players directly through his midfield from here on; rather, the team is inviting the opposing striker to press them and get the team moving.
Betis keeps possession here and passes it between their centre-backs until Las Palmas’s striker triggers the press onto the right centre-back.
Then, they just play it to the other side.
The press gets to them here, and that is when things get really interesting.
While Natan gets put under a lot of pressure here, he stays calm and plays a long ball.
Yes, Pellegrini prefers his team to play short passes and build out of the back that way, but they can also find different solutions, making them so hard to press, even deep in their own half.
Natan plays a nice chipped ball towards the half-space, exactly behind the forward-dragged midfielders, where two Betis players are now in a good position to receive the ball.
They get the ball down and play the 3v2 situation in the midfield well because Las Palmas completely vacated their central midfield for the press, which allows Betis to control possession right in the heart of play.
Cucho switches play to Sabaly, who now has a lot of space in front of him and is able to carry the ball into the Las Palmas half.
With these passes, Betis can easily get into the final third with just a couple of passes, simply because they have high-quality passing and know exactly which zones they want to pass into.
Looking at the picture above, we now see Betis building up in the opposing team’s half.
They keep three players back to consistently switch play, keep the deep block moving, and have their midfielders move between the lines to keep them occupied.
This leads them to pin Las Palmas deep in their own half, with no pressure on the ball.
Pellegrini has his men in complete control of the situation from here on out.
Sabaly now moves a bit inside, and Cucho occupies the two far-sided centre-backs of Las Palmas.
Pellegrini now has his wingers very wide, with both near the sideline.
With Sabaly making his run, Antony is wide open on the right side.
He can receive a ball and, immediately after receiving the switch, go into an attacking 1v1.
With these passes, Pellegrini and his team are always able to keep opposing teams moving and prevent them from putting any pressure on the ball.
Betis is always able to keep the ball movement liquid in any situation.
The players always know where their passing options are, even for long-range passes, and therefore execute them well, which is Betis’s biggest strength.
Winning The Ball & Staying Calm
To dominate possession, you don’t just need to be great at keeping the ball but also at winning the ball back.
Pellegrini and his Betis side are a rather interesting team in that regard.
Overall, La Liga is not the most press-focused league in the world; while many teams are actively trying a high line of press and more and more teams are focusing on counter-pressing as well, La Liga still is a rather modest league in these things, especially compared to leagues like the Bundesliga or the Premier League.
This means that while Betis is good at winning the ball back, like most Spanish teams, they often focus on defending and waiting for mistakes, as well as pressing high up the field.
The picture above shows a situation after a throw-in in the game against Real Madrid.
Pellegrini tactics prefer a man-oriented press in these situations, as highlighted in the picture.
Every Betis player has a clear opponent he needs to mark, and they effectively condense the space for Real like that.
When their press gets played through or over, Pellegrini has his men fall back behind the ball quickly, without any recovery press attempts most of the time.
Behind the man-orientation, Pellegrini has his team play in a zonal marking, allowing them to react to possible long balls played over their high line of press and intercept these passes quickly or at least react to get to the opposing striker in time to force him into a duel.
We can see exactly that in the picture above.
Real could not find a solution with short passes and punted the ball downfield.
Rodríguez was already waiting for the ball and was easily able to recover it.
Betis regularly encounters these pressing situations.
They time them really well and react quickly to their triggers, and their press rarely runs into anything.
What’s really interesting as well is their patterns after winning the ball.
Most teams would blindly try to attack quickly after recovering the ball in the opposing half.
Still, Betis moves quickly to form a triangle and can play two quick passes to establish possession.
They keep doing so, as seen in the picture above.
This time, on the wing, with good movement on and off the ball, they drag Real Madrid back and establish control once again.
Pellegrini has his men do that to prevent counter-pressing attempts from working out.
While getting into attack quickly again might sound appealing, Betis struggled with the counter-press after they forced long balls during their rough patch in the Winter.
With this tactical measure, Pellegrini helped his players out and gave them an easy passing option to avoid getting caught after the high press.
It really helped Betis establish possession after winning the ball back.
Using Positional Play To Their Advantage
Dominating possession and keeping the opposing team moving are two very good things, but they don’t win you football games per se; goals do.
Manuel Pellegrini knows this and therefore uses his possession principles to allow his team to capitalize in the final third and in the box.
Betis are not the greatest attacking team overall; their 40 goals in 29 league matches so far are decent, but nothing more.
The team lacks a true goalscoring threat.
The January signing of Cucho has shown promise, but the team’s top goal scorers are its star midfielders, Isco and Giovanni Lo Celso.
Looking at their positional play while attacking, we see many of the same things we saw in the first part of this piece.
Betis is keeping three players in their first line, which keeps the ball moving and allows them to switch play easily, while the midfielders try to receive between the lines.
Just as they did with Las Palmas, they pinned Sevilla deep into their own half in El Gran Derbi, which made it hard to find space between the lines.
Therefore, Pellegrini just moved five players into Sevilla’s back five, forcing them to play man coverage in the defensive line.
With the wide wingers spreading out, they are creating gaps in that line now.
Betis now overloads the right side and plays the ball out there.
The players are no longer waiting for their opponents; they are putting their foot down and increasing the tempo of the game.
With his dribbling, Sevilla’s defenders are now forced to choose between attacking and falling back, which often leads to a mistake.
Sabaly is able to make a run right in the gap in the back of the left centre-back and is able to receive the through ball in the box, right in the space behind Sevilla’s backline.
From then on, Pellegrini values box presence highly, not just for his strikers.
Betis’s midfielders keep their momentum and move into the box in a pre-planned pattern.
Three players are using their pace to get to the near post, dragging the last Sevilla defenders towards that area, too, while Johnny makes the long run towards the far post.
Sabaly now chips the ball over all the players into Johnny’s path because he knows precisely where this run would end.
The young midfielder then finishes the attack off and ties the Derbi up again.
Betis and Pellegrini went on to win their first win in El Gran Derbi since 2018, later with another great goal out of their positional play, helping them widen the gap to seventh place in the La Liga table.
Conclusion
Manuel Pellegrini is one of the most experienced coaches in world football right now, and it shows.
The first half of the season was rough for Real Betis.
Three competitions and shallow squad depth led to injuries and a drop in form, resulting in the team stumbling towards a very unsatisfactory season.
Instead of giving up, the team and manager decided to work on their deficiencies and got back to what they were over the last couple of seasons: one of the best possession teams in Europe.
The team’s path to the final in the UEFA Conference League looks doable in its current form.
Thanks to Pellegrini’s adaptations, their position in the league drastically improved over the last few weeks, saving their season.
Now, the team will face another in-form team, FC Barcelona, on Saturday, and Betis will look for revenge for the Copa game.
We should be in for a dramatic game this weekend.
