Game 52. What a season, what a journey! Strategy brought mentality. Mentality improved quality. And here we are, Leverkusen are so close to completing an unbelievable treble.

Same 11 with the first Roma game, to play at different speeds, mixing the tempo, trying to punish Atalanta's m2m high press with Adli/Frimpong running behind when needed, attempting to control with Wirtz as false 9 when needed.

Might be a good time to watch (or revisit) my Wirtz video 🪄

youtube.com/watch?v=eYrnef…

An excellent article from Antonio on the most prominent tactical innovation of this season: attacking plays mixing zonal and non-zonal ideas. You must read it!

Inter showed that with movement within a framework of collective awareness, fluidity and freedom can easily coexist with structure and discipline.

My article on Inzaghi’s dynamic interpretation of positional play is on The Rival App 👇
therival.go.link/article/714?ad…

I can't understand Ange's insistence on using an extremely narrow backline. City unnecessarily tried playing through it, but whenever they played around or cut it through diagonals and switch plays, they created threat.

This is a very valuable thread from Jamie that I strongly recommend you to read.

In fact, this season, many top level teams started using non-zonal attack more and more, with the more common use of non-zonal (man-to-man) defending/pressing (even Guardiola's City).

Let's

Surprise! They did it again!

Xhaka should certainly score more goals because:
1) They are bangers.
2) He has so many interesting goal celebrations in his repertoire.

After this game, I have no more doubt: Xabi Alonso will dominate the next era of football as a head coach.

Alonso tailored something completely special against Roma tonight and his plan worked perfectly in every phase of the game.

The analysis, the plan, the transmission of

Leverkusen are playing with an interesting 11. Wirtz as false 9, Grimaldo inverting and filling the left half space next to Wirtz (sometimes Stanisic as well), while Adli and Frimpong offer width. With Grimaldo, Wirtz, Xhaka still playing close to each other, they can control the

So happy for him ☺️☺️ Inter were one of my favorite teams to follow this season and this was mostly because of his innovative ideas with the ball.

I must say if a team ended this unbelievable streak of Leverkusen, it must have been Stuttgart. All 3 games this season between these two teams were wild, and consistently, Hoeness' team forced Leverkusen to play out of control in the in-possession phase. Two young great coaches

This is just incredible. This is law of football now. Leverkusen come back, no matter what. Crazy stuff!

The tweet below was what RdZ found by the way, a City team uncharateristically moving a lot against Brighton’s m2m high press.

Pep continues to evolve every season, that’s what makes him so successful.

Congratulations to Inter! Really enjoyed watching Inzaghi's team this season. They completely deserved this success.

Like the first game earlier this season, Thuram is completely dominating the game against Milan's CBs. 6/8 in duels so far.

Tuchel's plan was clear against Arsenal's high press: Create space for Musiala and let him play 1v1 to break the pressure.

Two pivots were placed asymmetrically during the build-up towards the right side. Dier stayed as wide as possible on the left side, and a huge space opened