Paris Saint-Germain uses Dembele to create an advantage, Arteta uses weak frontcourt to acquire enemies

At the beginning of this season, it is obvious that many people will not expect that Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal will meet in the Champions League semi-finals.

Both teams lack sufficient presence in the history of the Champions League and often appear on the edge of this stage. However, in recent years, they have reached the center of the stage for various reasons.

With the strong support of the club, Arteta's team's ability to fight against hits is increasing day by day. Although there is inevitably a sense of players relying on their bodies to support coaching tactics, at least in this chaotic season, Arsenal came to the semi-finals with this point; when encountering Arteta's mix and match, Luis Enrique's style highlights the "tradition" of Gua-based tactics. It is only a matter of Enrique that he can do with two centers and then walk here with the frontless formation.

Now, there is a team that will once again enter the finals and earn a valuable opportunity to win the Touch Championship.

Neither team made any amazing tactical changes in this game.

Needless to say, Paris Saint-Germain's only change is that Douai starts and replaces Barcola's position. Other areas are regular candidates. On Arsenal, they did not continue the idea of ​​starting centers in Merino. Today, Trosad and Odegao broke through, Rice and Merino appeared in the midfield.

So in terms of thinking, both teams tend to be conventional, at least the usual way of playing between the two teams during this period, but in terms of position, Enrique brought a little trouble to Arsenal. After the opening of the game, Enrique's team showed its characteristics, most of which were short, flexible, light and able to run, so they showed a strong presence in both the ball and the ball stage:

, and less than 4 minutes into the game, Paris Saint-Germain broke Arsenal's goal:

, the problems that Arsenal had appeared were quite clear. It is clear that during the front pressure in the midfield and frontcourt, Dembele captured the gap between their two lines, thus breaking Arsenal's entire pressing line:

So from this defense, the problem seems to have occurred on Kiviol. He is too far from Dembele's position, giving the latter too much room to catch and handle the ball, but in the subsequent games, you can see that the problem is not simply on Kiviol.

Because Dembele's retracement is extremely strong, and even appears in the midfield or midfielder to get the ball in the first line of the midfielder:

If Dembele retreats to such a deep position and organizes Paris Saint-Germain's attacks many times, it is obviously not just a question of how to limit Arsenal's central defender should think about how to limit it, but a question that Arteta should think about.

Demberle has retreated like this, and there have been similar precedents when playing for Liverpool and other teams, so this is not difficult to predict. Theoretically, if you free up someone to watch people from the perspective of restricting your opponent's performance, it is naturally a relatively easy choice. If Mourinho had made a choice, he would have made in almost every ten choices.

Even if people are not targeted and Dembele is allowed to get the ball from the outside, he must use players who are relatively able to keep up with him when he moves to the core area.

However, Arsenal could not do it at all today.

First, Arsenal's system determines that they cannot do man-to-man.

Two people are needed before the sudden outbreak, two people are needed on the flank, and the four-guard defensive system is difficult to change, so when there are only two left in the midfield, Arsenal has no extra staff to defend Dembele.

Once you take such a risky defense, Dembele drags one of the midfielders to the periphery and catches the ball in other positions, you will see the gap in the midfield:

Secondly, the characteristics of the personnel selected by Arteta also make them unable to limit Dembele.

and Tenghach also use short central defenders like Risandro Martinez. Arteta has been more inclined to use tall players in the core areas of defense in recent years. Needless to say, the central defenders are both big men. At the same time, defense is not good, but Jorginho's playing time is getting shorter and shorter.

Even at the full-back position, Zinchenko needs to give way to players like Skeli and Karafiori who are either more powerful or more physique, so at the beginning of today, Arsenal will inevitably not be able to limit Dembele.

What's more, in addition to the above two major situations, Odgao, as the captain, is still constantly calling on his teammates to come forward to press, as if he didn't see how the ball was lost:

So at the beginning of the first half, Arsenal completely lost the power at home, the ball was basically taken away by Paris Saint-Germain, and the defense could not limit the opponent's key players. In the first 20 minutes, Arsenal had only one counterattack:

It was not until the 21st minute that Saka got the ball and offensive opportunity in the frontcourt, but it had not been successful:

So before the offense was carried out, Arsenal needed to get the ball back first, so that Arsenal could bring Sakato to the offensive end, and then create real pressure and difficulties for Paris Saint-Germain.

In fact, this link can be helped by time.

As a typical melon-based team driven by running and passing, Paris Saint-Germain's game has a clear distribution pattern. The two halfs often perform better at the start of the game. As time goes by, the performance will gradually decline..

The reasons for this performance fluctuation are naturally related to physical fitness. The changes in the latter affect the players' running intensity and ability to do movements. Even if Enrique tries to choose short players as much as possible in most positions, it is still impossible to ensure that the intensity is basically maintained above the level. Once the level drops, the running and passing efficiency decreases, the problem of lack of a stable catch point will be exposed.

So after 20 minutes, Arsenal actually regained some situations and made some offenses:

However, at that time, Paris Saint-Germain could also counterattack:

Arsenal really threatened on the court, but in fact it was 30 minutes later:

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Especially in the 45th minute, Skelly intervened in the instigation attack, which was the most threatening attack in the first half:

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, which made it impossible to play the channel from this road after the later run declined.

So, if the score is 0-0, Arsenal can still follow the trend, such as routine defense in the first half of the half, and use the opponent's natural performance to fall in the second half, so as to play their own characteristics and form a trend of playing well for a period of time.

However, Arsenal is already behind and still at home, so they need to play more proactively, and the first step is to grab the ball back first.

However, Trosad, who broke out, could not hold the ball on the court:

At this time, Arteta needs to realize that he needs to raise Merino. Although Odegao's performance in the low position is as follows:

Arteta cannot hesitate. Merino cannot defend Dembele in the midfield position, nor can he play his characteristics, and is almost useless. He should come up and use his body to suppress Paris's Vitinia and Marcinhos in the core area, thereby helping Arsenal take the ball. This is different from the game where the ball has the ball rights in the league. Arsenal needs to use Merino to grab the ball rights back.

At least before the first half was about to end, he had proved that he had a chance to do this:

But when he came back in the second half, Arteta did not act like this.

Although Merino once helped Arsenal equalize the score in the set ball at the beginning of the second half, the offside result made them have to start working again: there was no change in tactical tactics, so Arsenal could only wait for the natural tide of Paris Saint-Germain.

Because midfielders are generally tall and their ability to turn and twist are incomparable to those of Paris Saint-Germain's small players, Arsenal's pass and cut efficiency is relatively limited. The most threatening Saka is stuck in the second line by his own tactics, and only if the ball is on his feet can he come to the frontcourt.

The sudden outbreak area has no speed and no ability to confront the ball, and receiving the ball has become the biggest problem for Arsenal in this game, which makes Arsenal's strength in the second half a match. In the 56th minute, Rice inserted the attack that brought out:

In fact, it is the same as Skelly's pass from Martinelli at the end of the first half. It looks quite threatening, but how many times can it appear?

Moreover, only by leaning forward with the fullback and the midfielder, the attacking players and the coach who arranged the tactics in this way need to blush.

After all, during the period when Arsenal played sporadic attacks, Dembele, who was in the open, was still showing his power: In the 70-minute interval, Dembele left the court due to injury. This was originally an excellent opportunity for Arsenal to exert force, but Arteta missed the opportunity again. He did not make substitutions or adjustments, but instead sat on Enrique to replace the two 80 minutes ago.

The problem that the Guagen coach did not like to adjust again appeared in Arteta. On the contrary, Enrique was forced to adjust, and the wrong entry and exit made the time point of Paris Saint-Germain's running decline and performance decline repeatedly.

Especially after Enrique replaced Gonzalo Ramos, Paris Saint-Germain became a more threatening team at the end of the game, and was once very close to scoring the second goal:

did not do it. Although it was a pity, Paris Saint-Germain was enough to win the game, because in addition to their outstanding performance, Arteta and Arsenal also helped them a lot.

In this game, Arsenal's shortcomings were clearly exposed.

After all, it's our cliché. As the most threatening player, Saka has been pressed on the second line by coaches' tactics for many years. This has accumulated a serious hamstring injury many years later, but after he recovered, there has been no change.

Saka needs the ball rights to go to the frontcourt to threaten the opponent, but the players in the sudden attack cannot help the team win the ball rights. Trosad himself does not have this strength. As for Odegao, we don’t need to say more.

From 2021 to today, we have been repeatedly pointing out this problem, everything has evidence, but now it is already too big to lose.

And on Paris Saint-Germain's side, Enrique's team is still moving forward.

You can say that they are walking on tightropes, and their extreme ideas make every step look a bit thrilling, and there will be a shortcoming in every game, but in terms of thinking, Enrique's team is indeed trying to be self-consistent.

Moreover, they seem to be very willing to bear the price caused. When they perform poorly, players can also accept the direction and ideas of the coach's criticism. Just like Dembele's multi-faceted transformation this season, it becomes Zhou Yu's fight against Huang Gai. No one else can say anything about us outsiders..

Now, it is only one step away from advancing to the finals, and the second round will be played at home. Paris Saint-Germain is much brighter in front of them, it depends on their performance.

Of course, it depends on how much Arteta and Arsenal can help them.