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Chelsea
Chelsea Pressing and Counters
Mourinho had to stop Bayern playing easily in order to stop them from destroying Chelsea.
So, Chelsea decided to press Bayern Munich, but different types of pressing were utilised in different parts of the field. Chelsea pressed hard to win the ball in Bayern’s third, as they probably identified a weakness in the passing abilities of the back 4.
However, when Bayern did get the ball into midfield, Chelsea stopped their aggressive press, and shifted to a form of pressing where the defending players looked to close the spaces that the attackers were likely to pass into. This slightly relaxed outlook spared Chelsea a wild goose chase.
In terms of their attack strategy, Chelsea looked to counter through the wings. This is an area that Bayern’s attacking formation doesn’t really cover well. Therefore, teams that move swiftly down the wings can catch Bayern on the break. Chelsea scored their goals after coming in from wide areas.
On the night, Mourinho decided to attack down the right side. This is because David Alaba loves to get forward in support of Ribery, and often goes beyond him. The pacy Andre Schurrle was placed here, and the German exploited the weakness well, making 4 key passes, and notching up an assist as well.
Bayern Adding Width
After Ramires was sent off, Chelsea needed to shut shop, and defend their spaces very carefully. In order to draw them out, Bayern Munich tried to stretch the game. Guardiola brought on Shaqiri, a winger who generally goes on the outside, for Robben, who was cutting inside very often.
He also brought on Gotze, to pick through balls in a stretched defence. After these changes, the inter-changing of positions within the system virtually came to an end. Towards the close of extra time, Bayern relied almost solely on crosses and their ability to stretch the opposition defence.
As Chelsea went deeper, Bayern changed their approach, and began floating in angled crosses from deeper areas. By doing so, they leveraged the number of bodies they had in the box, maximising their scoring chances. Cech was forced into some fantastic saves because of such crosses, and the equaliser also evetually came about as a result of such a cross.
