Manchester City 1-3 Bayern Munich: Tactical Analysis

Bayern Wide Play

On the night, and in the first half especially, Bayern were looking at crosses and width as an option of attack. Ribery started out wide and scored his first goal by cutting inside. Alaba was also a constant menace down that side for Micah Richards. Bayern attempted 16 crosses on the night, of which only 4 were successful though. This tactic was designed to stretch the City defence, and and the use of wing backs meant that either the City attackers had to track back (something they are weak at) or the two midfielders had to work harder, opening space in the middle for the likes of Kroos. Initially, Rafinha and Robben served as outballs by staying out on the right touch-line. This was facilitated by the fact that Nasri played a lot narrower, leaving the wide space in front of Gael Clichy open. later though, as the City defence moved to their left to try and plug this gap, it opened spaces for Alaba,and the young Austrian needed no second invitation to attack these spaces. They even got their goal from such a situation, where City had to drift right to cover the overload on the left side, and Dante could chip a diagonal pass across the defence to Muller, who scored. 9 of the 16 crosses Bayern made were from the left side.

Navas in space

Due to the fact that Alaba was getting forward quite often, it was only natural that he left a lot of space behind him. As an extension, it was quite natural that many of the City attacks, especially those in the first half, i.e. the counters they launched, were down the right hand side and through Jesus Navas. The Spaniard had 42 touches of the ball, more than any other of City’s attacking players. However, Navas put in a disappointing performance on the night, and wasn’t able to be the outlet that City needed him to be. Of the 8 crosses that he attempted, not a single one found its target. He also managed to complete only 55% of his passes. This was probably down to the fact that Navas didn’t get to see enough of the ball in general, and received it very sporadically.

Aguero picking up Lahm

In the first half, a large reason for Bayern being so comprehensively dominant was Philip Lahm. the captain found himself in a lot of space, and had a lot of time to play the ball to his team mates. Pellegrini picked up on this and assigned Sergio Aguero to the task of picking up the Bayern skipper everytime the Bavarians got on the ball. Of course, this worked to reduce Lahm’s influence on the game, but it didn’t make too much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, with the likes of Schweinsteiger and Kross dominating too. It also reduced some of the little attacking potency that City had up until that point.