Champions League Tactical Digest – The Semi Finals
Who will qualify for the Champions League Final? Today on the blog Amit Singh gives us his wrap up of 1st leg tactical analysis from around the web.
With the second leg of this season’s Champions League semi-final upon us we will take a look at some of the best tactical breakdowns of the first legs from across the web and look to point you in the right direction of where these semi-finals will be won and lost.
Atletico Madrid vs Chelsea
Chelsea’s tactics in Madrid were aimed at keeping the side compact, hard to break down and in essence keeping a clean sheet. Chelsea go back to Stamford Bridge knowing that any victory will see them through to the Champions League final for the third time in their history. The game was not spectacular, even verging on boring, without any real interesting tactical battles emerging. As Michael Cox of Zonal Marking observed, it was a game between two counter-attacking sides, neither of whom wanted to risk too much and as such neither of whom created too much. Atletico were less comfortable having to set the tempo, being used to sitting back and playing on the break.
This led to a very dull game in which neither team mustered many obvious openings. Chelsea relied on
