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Four things Xabi Alonso’s Real Madrid must do to beat Barcelona in El Clasico
The first El Clasico of the season is here, and Real Madrid enter the game with a sense of revenge in their eyes after the results of last season.
This time around, Los Blancos enter as the relative favourites given their flying form while Barcelona have several doubts especially around their defence.
After all, recent games against PSG and Sevilla revealed several shortcomings of their defensive setup and how they can be capitalised on.
Xabi Alonso and Co., needless to say, have maintained a very close eye on the defeats and took notes from the results.
Here are four ways the Real Madrid manager could set up his team to beat Barcelona on 26th October.
The long-ball trap
While Barcelona are indeed one of the world’s best teams at the moment, they do have their frailties and balls over the top are one such weakness they have struggled to deal with.
Luckily for Xabi Alonso, he has a player who can exploit that weakness to perfection given his innate skill to distribute immaculate and precise long-balls over the top. That player is none other than Dean Huijsen.
The youngster has revolutionised the team’s defence since arriving in the summer, not only as a superior defender but as a brilliant player with the ball at his feet.
While he was initially a doubt to participate in the Classico through injury, he has recovered and is likely to start on the night.
Getting the ball to Huijsen regularly, thus, should be one of Real Madrid’s strategies on the night as he can strike long passes to the attackers and wingers to break Barcelona’s defensive structure. Such a manoeuvre will help break the offside trap.
Further, Huijsen has shown composure when pressed by opponents and is safe with the ball at his feet, making it a low-risk plan.
Slicing the defence with precision
One of the most well-documented means of breaking past Barcelona’s offside-trap this season is well-timed runs from the deep, but given Kylian Mbappe’s form, it is Real Madrid’s best bet to look to release him on the break.
While Mbappe must look to hold his line better than he did last season, it is clear that he will have several chances given the open defence of the Catalans. Arda Guler and Jude Bellingham, however, will be crucial to his success.
Both midfielders are set to start in the space behind Mbappe and must release the ball quickly and precisely to release the Frenchman into the open spaces behind the defence.
As much as Mbappe’s timing will be critical, so will the midfielder’s timing of their passes. Should the two factors align and play in Real Madrid’s favour, the counter-attacks will be devastating for the Catalans.
An effective press
Real Madrid may well have lost all four Clasicos to Barcelona last season, but they did show tangible improvement from one to the next.
In the final game against Barcelona, they took a 2-0 lead and looked set to take a dominant scoreline. However, they offered them a way back in the game because they sat back and got slack and conceded four goals before half-time.
Tomorrow, it is crucial that the men in white show that they have learnt their lesson from that outing. The answer, clearly, is to keep the pressure on Barcelona.
Pressing the opponent will be crucial to maintain an advantage on them, and focus must be on the ball-handling midfielder Pedri and Frenkie De Jong.
The duo, at this point, form the spine of Barcelona’s setup and are the most important players in the system alongside Lamine Yamal. Should Real Madrid press the trio, make them uncomfortable and force errors, they can create big openings.
In fact, Sevilla did the same against Barcelona in their recent win over the Catalans and got two goals in stoppage time using that very approach.
Intent to dominate
While all the above-mentioned ideas are realistically implementable to expose Barcelona’s lacunae in defence, the most important faced for Xabi Alonso is to ensure that his side are versatile and have an intent to dominate.
Real Madrid are just getting started on a possession-heavy game but Barcelona are the kings of having the ball at their feet. That, however, must not deter the dressing room from trying to take the front foot.
Defeating Barcelona will require them to push the Catalans back and fearlessly dominate the game – something that will require a strong mentality.
When Sevilla took on Barcelona recently, Los Nervionenses had more touches in Barcelona’s box than Barcelona did in theirs (34 vs 30) and the difference was palpable.
Pushing Barcelona deep and dominating the game was an important part of the system because it pushed the entire team back, disrupted their high line and created goalscoring opportunities for the opponents.
The derby weekend is here as Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid are set to lock horns on Sunday afternoon at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano.
After an eventful transfer window and a stuttering start, Atletico Madrid reaffirmed their position as genuine title contenders and have done decently well so far this season.
With four wins, a draw and a defeat to their name, they sit on 13 points after six games.
Real Madrid, meanwhile, have only had one defeat and are on 15 points after as many games, only behind Barcelona who sit on a perfect record.
Diego Simeone’s men had a shaky start to the season, but have picked up steam in recent weeks with seven goals scored and none conceded in their last two games.
Given their strong record against Real Madrid at home, they will look to take all three points tomorrow.
Madrid Universal brings you three talking points ahead of Atletico Madrid vs Real Madrid.
A test away from home
It is no secret that Real Madrid’s form on the road this season has been poor, not necessarily for the results themselves but how the team have conducted themselves in away grounds.
For the first time in years, there appears to be a sense of uncertainty around Los Blancos’ ability to produce results away from home.
For long periods in the game, they appear willing to hand over the momentum, and the resultant pressure has seen them collapse.
A last-gasp winner from Carlos Espi handed them the win against Espanyol away from home, and they went on to lose against Real Betis in their second away fixture of the season.
Most recently, they bottled a 2-0 lead against Elche and again required a stoppage-time winner from Espi to take the three points.
Tomorrow’s game, in that sense, is extremely challenging, for it is not only away from home but against an opposition of high quality.
Playing Atletico Madrid at the Metropolitano is as challenging as games get, and Real Madrid have an extremely poor record at the venue.
Since 2017, Real Madrid have only won twice at the Metropolitano with three defeats and three draws. Last season, they suffered a 5-2 defeat and the game went on to break the team’s momentum.
Heading into such a tricky clash with an ongoing crisis away from home makes Sunday’s clash very complicated for the Merengues.
Arda Guler has to return
After a long time, Jose Mourinho took the Yan Diomande experiment to the next level and handed the player back-to-back starts for Real Madrid.
Clearly, the new signing still has a long way to go in terms of his adaptation, but he has been promising as an attacking outlet in his few appearances.
Diomande started both against Rayo Vallecano and Elche, but there is a strong case to drop him for the Madrid derby and play Arda Guler instead.
The Turkish international was on the bench against Rayo Vallecano and played as a No. 10 against Elche, with Jude Bellingham rested. Now, with the Englishman set to return, the manager has a decision to make.
Mourinho has made it clear that he wishes to ease Diomande into Real Madrid’s dynamics to reduce the pressure on his shoulders. Fielding him from the start in a derby would contradict that idea.
Beyond that, however, Guler has shown far more utility and promise as an attacking and creative outlet than Diomande, making the right-wing decision quite clear for the manager.
Real Madrid with and without Guler have been two completely different stories this season, and the team will require every last bit of creative inspiration that he has in him to get past Atletico Madrid tomorrow afternoon.
There is also a case for Brahim Diaz to be brought in, and the Moroccan star is also probably ahead of Diomande on the pecking order. Guler, however, stands out as a top option even ahead of Brahim.
Eyes on Vinicius Jr.
For years, Vinicius Jr. has always utilised the big stages to make his statements, for he has been a player to speak through performances and not words.
For instance, he scored a stunning solo goal last season against Barcelona in the Spanish Super Cup at a time when he was least expected to do so. At that point, he had not scored in 16 straight games, but the big moment called out to him.
It is clear that the Brazilian is not going through his best moment right now once again. The past few weeks have been hard on him, especially after he did well at the World Cup and returned to Madrid with higher expectations on him.
So far this season, Vinicius has only scored one goal in seven games. Beyond the goals, however, he has not looked like his usual threatening self on the flank and has not created half as many chances as he usually would.
Such is the player’s situation that his place in the team is being called into doubt for the first time in years. After all, Yan Diomande can play on the left and showed glimpses of his ability in the previous game.
All eyes, thus, will be on Vinicius on Sunday to see if he can step up to the occasion and make his presence felt when it really matters. He has always been one for the big stage, and tomorrow’s stage is the biggest yet this season.
