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Certain moments change matches, and even more so, if the match is as evenly poised as a 1-1 draw in the first leg. Two defining moments changed the course of the tie at Allianz Arena where Bayern Munich won a close encounter with a solid Manchester United side. This season has been fraught with difficulties and injuries for David Moyes and pundits have already begun making predictions on a possible axing of the Red Devil’s new boss.
In a season like that, he may just have saved his career with a performance that he, as well as all the Red Devil fans, would be proud of. It was always supposed to be a David v/s Goliath battle, pun fully intended, but the way the two legs were played spoke volumes of the resurgence that United have begun to witness of late.
What many people predicted to be a massacre turned out to be a very competitive affair. Of course, United played to their strengths and the possession was overwhelmingly in the favour of the Bavarians, but you just don’t battle it out with a Guardiola side in the midfield.
FIRST HALF: PEP CHANGES TACTICS
Lahm’s heat map till the Rafinha substitution: He regularly drifted into the centre
The first leg had been a typical Guardiola style affair with Bayern keeping the ball for long stretches without having any penetration. Ribery and Robben had been very narrow while the width had been provided by the full backs. The second leg witnessed a complete turnaround in the average positioning of the wing-side Bayern players with both Robben and Ribery hugging the touchline and the full backs coming narrow, especially Lahm.
It was the kind of tactic that was always going to work, particularly towards Robben’s flank where Kagawa was deployed. With Kagawa moving into central positions, Lahm did not have to keep wide and he followed his opponent into the central position often leaving a 3-man defence behind. At times, Lahm’s involvement in the centre created a 3-2-3-1 attack from the Bavarians.
Check out Robben’s wide position which was a total contrast with his first leg positioning
On the other hand, Robben and Ribery stretched the play whenever possible and actually crossed the ball rather than playing it into central areas. This had a major effect on the left flank of United where Evra was forced to go wide and leave his center-backs isolated. Vidic in particular had to constantly deal with the aerial threat of Mandzukic.
In response, what Guardiola never expected, Kagawa managed to come wide during the Bayern attacks and play centrally when on a United attack. What was even more impressive with Kagawa’s impressive cameo was that, he managed to negotiate the threat of Robben in every 1-on-1, even better than Evra at times.
The Red Devils in the end were, as expected, playing on the counter with a nice compact shape in their defence. Phil Jones had been a defensive rock against Ribery and the Carrick-Fletcher combo had pretty much blocked the advanced passing routes of the Bayern midfielders.
SECOND HALF: MOMENTS THAT CHANGE MATCHES
The second half opened up with clear instructions from David Moyes- attack more. And United obliged by having more possession and an incisiveness to their movement in the opponent third. They still kept a nice line of defence throughout this period. They were soon rewarded ten minutes into the second half, with a goal from the unlikely foot of the captain Patrice Evra. M
anchester United were in heaven having gotten the elusive away goal, but the next 30 seconds proved to be the crucial first moment that changed the match. As many teams are wont to do after getting a dream goal, they switched off for a moment, a moment good enough for Ribery to out-pace Jones for the first time and cross it into the path of Mandzukic, who headed the ball home, with the goal-scorer Evra to blame for the easy header.
The next match defining moment came when a quick interchange of passes with Valencia and Welbeck found Rooney in space inside the Bayern box. All he had to do was place the ball into the goal, but he was clearly surprised by the sudden pass and only managed to scuff the shot letting the golden chance of taking the lead go by.
Build-up to the second Bayern goal
At this point of time, Guardiola did something that Moyes did not. He made the right substitution at the right time by taking off Gotze and bringing on his right-back, Rafinha. This allowed Lahm to permanently take up a central midfield position and gave Robben extra support on his flank. Kagawa had to now check the runs of Rafinha and could not provide any extra support to Evra in dealing with Robben.
This was the exact build-up that allowed the second goal. In the second goal Rafinha made the intial pass to Lahm in midfield, from where the ball was later passed to Ribery. As had been the case in the first half, Ribery made a surprise switch of the flanks with Robben to maintain the width. With Rafinha occupying Kagawa, Evra found himself alone against Robben inside in his own box. Evra was easily beaten on pace and Muller beat Vidic to steer the ball home.
THE LAST GASP
With United now trailing at 2-1, Moyes introduced Hernandez to get back a goal, and in the process pushed his team to attack with abandon. In doing so, he opened up the path of a Bayern counter-attack. This was the part of the game where the difference in player quality became obvious, because even one of these counter-attacks could be fatal due to the individual quality of the Bayern players. Robben showed his class in one of these counter-attacks by dribbling and cutting past players in the United box to score a goal that effectively finished off the tie.
It was a well-deserved victory for Bayern Munich, who were the better team through the two legs but the Man United fans can take solace in the fact that this is that Bayern killing machine, which finished off the Bundesliga in March itself and has humiliated even strong teams with utter ease. Surely David Moyes would get another season to prove his mettle with a stronger team to challenge for the Premier league title next season.
