The UEFA Champions League is back! In the second leg of the last 16, Manchester City are facing Real Madrid at the Etihad Stadium. Pep Guardiola’s team enjoyed one-goal margin and two away goals from the previous clash in February, but we know Zinédine Zidane’s men will not give up the chance to grab another trophy.
This tactical preview is showing you some possible tactics of Manchester City play against Real Madrid. The below standpoints are provided after I watched all 57 games of Pep in the 2019/20 campaign, the content and tactics included in the analysis would not be niche.
Predicted lineups
City (4-3-3): Ederson; Kyle Walker, Nicolás Otamendi, Aymeric Laporte, João Cancelo; Rodrigo Hernández, İlkay Gündoğan, Kevin De Bruyne; Riyad Mahrez, Raheem Sterling, Gabriel Jesus
I chose Otamendi as Laporte’s partner since Eric García was young and inexperienced, and rumours have been reporting that he is returning to Barcelona. The left-back is Cancelo because of his good training attitude and performance, while Oleksandr Zinchenko did not have many chances after the Southampton loss. Benjamin Mendy is suspended for a second yellow. At the midfield, Gündoğan and Rodri are operating as a double-pivot, especially the German international offers something Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva do not. I did not place the front three wrongly, Sterling might play as a striker as Jesus would be more committed to his defensive duties. The positions are not fixed as we have seen the fluidity and positional interchanges of Pep’s men previously.
Madrid (4-3-3): Thibaut Courtois; Dani Carvajal, Éder Militão, Raphaël Varane, Ferland Mendy; Casemiro, Federico Valverde, Toni Kroos; Marco Asensio, Karim Benzema, Eden Hazard
Since Sergio Ramos was sent off in the last clash, he is suspended and probably Militão is replacing him, unless Zidane wants an extremely aggressive team, so Casemiro plays in that position. At the midfield, I left out Luka Modrić because of his off-the-ball outputs. It is too risky to play the Croatian midfielder with Kroos without Valverde balancing the team, unless the team sacrifices a winger position for the youngster. We are not sure whether Hazard is fully fit or not, as well as Asensio. These two spots might be replaced by Vinícius Júnior and Isco.
Positional plays
In this game, I believe City are going to abandon the inverted full-back approach, especially the tradition 3-2-5 approach will leave the defence being exposed. Instead, operating Gündoğan as a partner of Rodri is workable, and it is a proved success in the first leg.
Therefore, the full-backs are going to provide the width, attacking the wide zones in this game. At the centre, City should be able to create an overload or at least an equality thanks to the technical and passing ability of Ederson. The Brazilian goalkeeper has tried to play as a part of the back three in the build-up, and he should ensure the fluidity of ball circulation at the backline.
