Thursday 26 January 2017

MY TAKE ON THE GAME BETWEEN ATH.BILBAO VS ATH.MADRID

athletic bilbao played ath. madrid at home . the match was played on sunday with aduriz absent for athletic .
athletic started the game with 4-2-3-1 formation with inake williams starting upfront in place of aduriz . athletico madrid started the game with their favourite 4-4-1-1 formation . this game really showed as to why griezman is perfect no.10 . he has the technical ability plus has a great vision to pick out players who are in good position .
the game started with decent tempo with ath. mad sitting back and hitting ath bilbao on the counter attack . compared to bilbao ath.mad play deeper and defend deeper but just as it has its advantages it has its disadvantages too . ath.mad too lead in the 3rd min of the game and this was because of some personal mistakes by the player in the back four . i had said time and again  that playing in the back four is much more difficult than playing upfront . koke has started to play in the middle besided gabi this season but he tends to drop on left side where he had been playing last season . he whipped a cross and goalkeeper got confused and bilbao were behind . this was a mistake by the back four especially laporte who should be running towards the ball because the ball was whipped in his zone . secondly griezman was visible for the left back only so he should had kept pace with him and should had gone on a diagonal run to griezman and should had gone for the ball rather than just keeping up with griezman . 
now madrid took the lead and decided to sit back and defend deep . the trouble with madrid with madrid's tactics that on the counter they have to cover more amount of the grass if the opposition keeps on dropping deep instead of trying to stop them high up the pitch then ath mad can be stopped in the tracks . with madrid's goal bilbao had to respond but the trouble with bilbao was that williams was marked quite tightly by ath.mad and he hasnt got a good back to the goal game so they were finding it difficult to play through him . secondly they want to congest the middle of the park and defend narrow . this startegy made difficult for bilbao to work the ball from wide areas to inside for bilbao . bilbao were forced by ath. mad to throw crosses . now even though ath.mad deal better with crosses but the strategy to defend deep has its drawbacks because one good ball and he has a good header or shot at goal from inside the box so it can backfire that way . meanwhile ath mad were counter attacking but were not able because bilbao had started to drop back with the ball and they were able to read ath. mad attacks because most of them were from left side where carrasco was there . they stopped them in the tracks and for this bilbao's middle two itturaspe and san jose played a big part in that .
bilbao changed their strategy when they put raul garcia upfront in place of inake williams . bilbao could scored the goal because the ball was worked up from back to front quickly like counter attack . bilbao found the space in the hole where ath. mad back four were not ready to step up and deal with it .bilbao took the lead in the second half because as i had described in the earlier para that defending deep too has its drawbacks where on raul garcia produced a peach of the ball to pick out de marcos who's run was not tracked by any ath. mad player and had a free header inside the box . bilbao continued to threaten ath. mad especially down the left flank where Balenziaga and  Lekue were combining beautifully . ath. mad were finding it difficult to control munian who was making so very decent run's and played some good balls to his team mates and especially gabi was finding it difficult . but the trouble was that he was starting from very deep position and secondly he didnt had enough players up ahead to pass to .
i applaud diego simeone because he didnt long enough after he went behind to change the things . first off he bought off gabi who was struggling and was booked so bought him off and bought torres in place of him and have two players upfront in form of gamiero and torres. secondly he bought off carrasco who was not  that effective as he is generally and bought correa who is too is slippery player . secondly he bought gaitan who is a dead ball specialist since fouls tend to mount up in the latter half of the match and the dead ball situation needs a good player to take it . ath mad equalised because in that attack they were patient and both bilbao midfielders instead of closing down griezman stayed in their position as to not to get played around and expecting griezman to pass the ball . griezman showed his class and scored the equalizer .
although the game ended in equal honors ath. mad still dropped two points and i think simeone needs to have a plan B or different style of play when things are not going good for them . i think bilbao if they can cohesion in the front players then i think that they are a team to watch .

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