Atletico kicked off their 2015/16 La Liga campaign against newly promoted side, UD Las Palmas. The game had some interesting tactical strategies with the yellow men from Las Palmas quite secure in defence.
Atletico had the majority of the possession as they lined up in a 4-4-2 off the ball, which shifted to a 2-2-4-2 formation in possession. Jan Oblak was the guardian between the post, while Godin partnered with his fellow countryman Gimenez as the centre-backs with Filipe Luis and Juanfran as the fullbacks. Tiago and Gabi were deployed as the central midfielders while Koke and Oliver were more of inverted wingers, with Griezmann and the Colombian beast Jackson Martinez upfront.
Atletico Madrid did create more chances, but were to my surprise inferior to Las Palmas in the set-pieces. Las Palmas won almost every aerial battle, but couldn’t capitalize although Oblak was forced to stretch and make a fantastic bottom-corner save from a corner-kick of Las Palmas. The only goal of the game came not so surprisingly from the young Frenchman Griezmann who converted a free-kick opportunity: a beautifully struck free-kick that the keeper just couldn’t handle.
Las Palmas’ 4-4-2
Las Palmas defended in a 4-4-2 shape against the ball, with two very specific tactical adjustments vs Atletico’s build-up play. It was clear to see that the Las Palmas coach had analyzed Atletico’s pre-season games, as Atletico has a very specific way of building the play. Instead of playing a 3-man back line, Simeone wants both of his central midfielders to participate in the early-build up stages, with the Full-backs penetrating higher up the flanks, keeping the width, this creating the afore-mentioned 2-2-4-2 formation.
So, what Paco Herrera focused on was to play a specific man marking on the 2 central midfielders of Atletico Madrid during build-ups with the 2 strikers of the 3 defending lines of Las Palmas (4-4-2). This often forced Filipe Luis to drop deep instead of keeping the width. Luis dropped deeper to participate in the build-up play more often than Juanfran who kept the width of the right flank. What Las Palmas wanted was to let the ‘’weak’’ players of Atletico Madrid do the build-up job and force them into an area where they could maybe press more actively.
Las Palmas defended really well in their own half-pitch where the centre-backs would follow for example a dropping Martinez, to press him from behind. The zone Martinez had just left would be covered by another teammate. What Las Palmas did not succeed with was the approach to stop the build-up of Atletico Madrid.
When the 2 strikers were marking Gabi and Tiago, the centre-backs of Atletico had plenty of time on the ball and space to penetrate into. The wingers of Las Palmas were not interested in pressing in Atletico’s half and would often drop into their own half-pitch. This left huge space for the likes of Gimenez to advance with the ball as the channel was open to advance through. The 2 strikers totally ignored this potential pitfall as they were so focused on the 2 central midfielders. Now whenever the play got into the Las Palmas own half-pitch, Gabi and Tiago could easily move away from their respective markers, who did not follow the movements of the 2 in these areas. This meant that Atletico could easily outnumber the central area of the pitch with Koke and Oliver Torres who played as the inverted-wingers.
The weakness of this was that the strikers were entirely focused on the movement of Gabi and Tiago. They lacked the intelligence and followed the movement of the duo, sometimes blindly so.
Now when Tiago and Gabi were centrally positioned, the strikers were also close which left time and space for the centre-backs to penetrate, but whenever Gabi and Tiago split horizontally almost creating a new back 4 line, the 2 strikers duly followed them leaving a huge gap in-between instead.
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