One of the principles that accompany the preparation of any big match is usually related to controlling the pace of the match. If you ask me what that is, I would tell you, in short, that it consists of the duel being played at the pace that suits my team. As Johan Cruyff once told me before going out to play the Cup Winners’ Cup semi-finals in that Estadio delle Alpi that was the home of Juventus: “Zubi, you know, when they want to rest we serve quickly but above all, when they want accelerate then your job is to slow down the serve, slow down the pace of the game and slow down its intensity.”
Well, that’s more or less what controlling the pace of the game consists of. Of course, I was trying to find good examples in these hectic Champions League quarterfinals and, the truth is, I can’t find any. It would seem that, in general, the eight teams have had their favorable times, their moments of intensity and dominance, what we would call the handle of the game and that they have managed to clearly tilt the field in the direction of the rival’s goal.
And what do you have left when the opponent takes the ball from you and attacks in waves? Yes, you can resort to what Johan proposed, but that just gives you a few minutes of respite. You can try to have the ball under that axiom that if I have it, the opponent doesn’t have it and that way I can rest, but nowadays when a team has the ball dominated near its own area, it can be the situation in which it is. closer to conceding a goal, since the intensity of the rival pressure turns the ball into a dangerous artifact and a bad pass becomes a dangerous play. Here we do have good examples in Atlético’s first goal against Borussia Dortmund after a recovery near the rival area and also in Barça’s tie when a bad clearance by Donnarumma left the ball controlled by Barça 40 meters from the goal and Pedri Potter He took out his wand to give Raphinha a caviar that ended in an excellent way.
So, how do we overcome those agonizing moments in which the rival dominates and we do nothing but bail out the defense? I tell you the dream of a goalkeeper for these situations: The optimal thing would be to remain calm, maintain the defensive structure, keeping the lines together and giving few spaces of advantage to the rival, being intense in each dispute because each stolen ball is pure oxygen and, this is already It is worth noting, trying to threaten the rival defensive line with a pass behind their back, with some play that makes their defense line retreat that may begin to feel vulnerable and that by taking two steps back makes our opponent concede to us two steps of space in our defense and from there we can breathe and begin to turn the game around.
Of course, everything written above is pure theory, it could even be much more complex, since in the whirlwind of a match, in the middle of the noise of a stadium and with the pulse at a thousand, it is usually difficult to have much lucidity when what the match is about. It is demanding action from you and there is no time for reflection.
Some of that was also experienced at the Bernabéu with moments for Real Madrid and times for City in a magnificent round trip for the neutral spectator, but tremendous for Ancelotti and Guardiola, who would have preferred to be the masters of speed and rhythm. of the party.
But football is, at this point in the Champions League, a game that increasingly escapes the predictable and that predicts four return matches full of Rock And Rollfull of moments and matches within each match, full of everything that makes football a wonderful and incorsetable game.
Ah, that advice from Johan ended very well because although we lost 1-0 we managed to qualify for the Cup Winners’ Cup final, what times those were. The only collateral damage was that the referee showed me a yellow card after 20 minutes and since I already had another one that prevented me from playing in the final against Manchester United. There is no successful strategy without casualties.
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