This Wednesday (4), Manchester City, against Real Madrid, in the semifinals of the Champions League, will probably have control of the ball and the game and will create more chances to score, as it did in the two games against PSG and in the first match against Real. However, there is no favourite, because Real Madrid, as the columnist for Sheet Sandro Macedo, has “seven lives”. He looked eliminated against PSG and Chelsea, but rose to the top and qualified.
On the drawing board, the two teams look the same, with four defenders, three in midfield and three in attack, but on the pitch they are quite different. City, led by Guardiola, score under pressure and play most of the time with the ball in the opposing court. It attacks with two attacking midfielders, two wingers and a central player, in addition to the support of the defensive midfielder Rodri and the lateral Cancelo, who closes in the middle to be an organizer.
Real Madrid, led by Carlo Ancelotti, is more conservative, cautious, traditional. Prioritizes marking further back, to counterattack, with exchange of passes and balls stretched to Vinicius Junior, even more so that City acts with the defenders in front. Benzema is, at the same time, the striker striker and the constructor midfielder. It’s shirt 9 and shirt 10. He doesn’t play inside the area, he arrives in the area.
Young Phil Foden is getting better every day. He, for the English national team, and Vinicius Junior, for Brazil, are candidates to shine at the World Cup. There are other youngsters, like Pedri, from Barcelona and the Spanish national team.
At City, midfielder Rodri and midfielder De Bruyne are present in almost every match. In the other four positions (one midfielder and three more forwards), there are seven players who take turns (Mahrez, Sterling, Foden, Gabriel Jesus, Bernardo Silva, Gündogan and Grealish). Nobody knows who the holders are. Not even Guardiola.
In Brazil, because of the bad calendar and the arrival of several foreign coaches, especially Portuguese, there is also a lot of rotation, at the beginning and during the matches. Saving is essential, as long as there is no exaggeration and that the coaches know how to choose the best in the most decisive games.
On the other hand, there are many misconceptions in these assessments. Many times, coaches climb right, and it goes wrong, or they climb wrong, and it works, because there are dozens of factors involved in performances and results.
Corinthians faces Deportivo Cali this Wednesday, for Libertadores. How will the team be? Nobody knows. The team, in the first half against Fortaleza, was largely dominated. At halftime, coach Vítor Pereira exchanged a midfielder (Renato Augusto) for a third defender. The second half changed for several reasons, such as the own goal, at eight minutes, in favor of Corinthians, which changed the history of the match. In addition, Fortaleza got tired, as they pressed throughout the first half.
I could be wrong, but I didn’t see any collective improvement from Corinthians, as many thought. Furthermore, the first half of a game is often quite different from the second, for a variety of reasons.
Other times, a team is losing, but playing well and creating scoring chances. Then, 15 minutes into the second half, as usual, the coach replaces players, the team gets worse and loses the opportunity to draw and turn the game around.
The story of a game is sometimes far beyond our understanding and our pretended wisdom.
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