In a potential La Liga title decider, Barcelona werent able to topple Atletico Madrid at the Camp Nou to jump over their direct rivals in the table. Diego Simeones defensive tactics got the better of Ronald Koeman but inadvertently gave Real Madrid a huge advantage too.
This tactical analysis will take a deeper look into both teams tactics and tell you how exactly the two Spanish giants shared the points last Saturday.
Lineups
Koeman didn’t experiment too much with his lineup and we saw Barcelona in one of their strongest XI iterations. In a 3-5-2 system, we saw Marc-André ter Stegen in goal and a trio of Gerard Piqué, Óscar Mingueza and Clément Lenglet in front of him. The midfield was comprised of Sergio Busquets, Frenkie de Jong and Pedri while Sergiño Dest and Jordi Alba manned the wingback roles.
Lionel Messi and Antoine Griezmann completed the lineup up front. Koeman didn’t make too many changes until later on in the game apart from a forced substitution that saw Ilaix Moriba replace Busquets after around half an hour of play.
Interestingly, Atletico Madrid were also deployed in a 3-5-2 formation and it mimicked Barcelona’s own 3-5-2. Jan Oblak was in goal while the backline was comprised of Mario Hermoso, Felipe and Stefan Savić. Kieran Trippier and Yannick Carrasco manned the wings with Koke, Thomas Lemar and Marcos Llorente in midfield.
Former Barcelona star Luis Suárez and Ángel Correa completed the lineup in the forward line. Simeone was also forced to take off Lemar early due to an injury, replacing him with Saúl Ñíguez in the first half.
