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Sevilla and Barcelona drew 0-0 in the third round of fixtures since the La Liga restart.
Against Julen Lopetegui’s resurgent Sevilla, Barcelona manager Quique Setien got his substitutions wrong, and his tactical choices were even worse. This was exactly the kind of night the Barcelona faithful were dreading.
It did not take a practised eye to understand that Luis Suarez looked a tired man. Not only did Suarez look ineffective and flustered, he huffed and puffed his way throughout the ninety minutes, lumbering pitifully around the Ramon Sanchez Pizuan.
It was a painful sight to watch, not only because he had just returned from a six-month injury layoff, but also because of the tremendous weight of expectations that his manager Quique Setien heaped on to his 33-year-old shoulders.
However, it is not Suarez who is to be blamed - Barcelona's manager must accept most of the criticism. Here, we take a look at what went wrong for the Blaugrana on a hot, sultry night in Andalusia.
An ode to Sevilla
Before we analyse Setien’s tactical choices, we must first understand what Julen Lopetegui’s Sevilla are all about. To say that they are a physically dominant side would be an understatement. Sevilla boast both height and strength in abundance, two massive attributes if you want to get a positive result against Barcelona.
Historically, Barcelona have struggled against taller sides. We all remember how Bayern Munich mauled them 7-0 over two legs in the 2012-13 season of the UEFA Champions League. In the first leg itself, Mario Gomez and Thomas Muller used their height advantage superbly.
The same can be argued in Sevilla’s case. Barcelona could not threaten the Andalusians with their lacklusture passing, and Leo Messi’s team were also no threat from set pieces, especially corners.
Throughout the night, Sevilla matched Barcelona like-for-like, putting in spectacular performances all over the pitch, which augur well for them in the upcoming matches.
Setien began with a familiar looking Barcelona line-up, with Nelson Semedo and Ivan Rakitic coming in for the injured Sergi Roberto and Frenkie De Jong respectively.
In attack, they lined up with Martin Braithwaite on the left-hand side, almost as a second striker cum winger. Luis Suarez was deployed as the centre-forward, while Lionel Messi did not have a fixed position.
Throughout the night, the Barcelona captain found little pockets of space, sometimes popping up on the right-wing, but most of the time getting deep into the Barcelona half to create chances, almost like an attacking midfielder.
This approach may look harmless on the surface, until we take into account two important factors.
Firstly, Sevilla kept a 5-4-1 defensive shape, sometimes changing it to a 5-3-2 when the Barcelona midfield looked a little vulnerable. But overall, Sevilla packed their midfield with motivated, hard-working players, with even forward Munir El Hadadi dropping deep to cover the runs of Nelson Semedo.
It does not take a great deal of tactical expertise to understand that in order to break a five-man defensive shape, it is imperative to stretch the opposition through extensive wing-play.
That is the reason why the fullbacks Nelson Semedo and Jordi Alba had such a busy game. Both these defenders almost played like wing-backs, supplying the Blaugrana with much-needed width and variety.
However, despite the involvement of the full-backs, Barcelona had a narrow approach in the sense that most of their attacks came from the middle. This narrow, one-dimensional approach made their play slow and predictable, lacking in variety and dynamism.
Even when the ball was shifted on to the wings, the full backs played it back to a center-midfielder, thus once again making the play generate from the middle. It only made Barcelona predictable, with the Sevilla team comfortably packing players in large numbers to cover the middle of the pitch. The Barcelona passing also lacked a quick tempo; the players lacked freshness and energy, with accumulated fatigue playing a part.
On the other hand, the Sevilla players harmed Barcelona on a number of occasions, and all that threat came from the wings. During the latter stages of the game, the Sevilla players deliberately clung on to the touchline, finding lots of joy in destabilising the Barcelona back-line. This is exactly what Barcelona themselves should have done to their Andalusian counterparts.
Barcelona manager Quique Setien’s blunders
This is where Setien made his first mistake. In order to stretch Sevilla, he ought to have used a natural winger such as Ansu Fati, a player who has shown much promise of late. At 17 years of age, fatigue could not have been a factor in Fati’s exclusion from the game.
Nor indeed his inexperience, given the fact that he has already played a crucial role against Inter Milan this season in the Champions League, and even got on to the scoresheet in the last game. You really cannot understand why Fati did not get a chance to play in Andalusia.
The only conclusion we can draw is that Setien was betting on his senior players to get the job done. The experience of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Ivan Rakitic, Arturo Vidal and Jordi Alba would be sufficient, he must have felt, to beat Sevilla.
However, none of these players could have provided the attacking width that a natural winger like Fati could, with his advanced range of attacking repertoire. The threat provided by Alba and Semedo is not the same that Ansu Fati would provide, simply because they are defensive players, not forwards.
The second mistake from Setien was to play Luis Suarez for the whole ninety minutes. It was a daft move, especially given the fact that by the 55th minute, the Barcelona number nine looked like he needed a break.
The Uruguayan barely had a sniff in the second half, and he squandered Barcelona’s best chance of the game when his first-time shot from a Jordi Alba low cross sailed over the crossbar. Suarez looked not only rusty but also a player who crumbled under the massive weight of expectations that his manager had thrust on him so soon after a long-term recovery from injury.
Perhaps it would have been better to play Martin Braithwaite from the middle, deploying Suarez instead from the left-hand side. Braithwaite has been in fine touch recently, having scored his maiden goal for the Blaugrana against RCD Mallorca just a few days back.
Against Sevilla, Braithwaite looked insipid and ineffective, never quite able to fully impose himself on to the game. A more central role may have suited the Dane’s game better, who is also quite a physical presence himself.
In short, Barcelona manager Setien got both his tactics and his substitutions horribly wrong.
Julen Lopetegui’s substitutions against Barcelona
In stark contrast, former Real Madrid coach Julen Lopetegui looked like a man possessed. Lopetegui had read the game as clearly as it is possible for a manager to read a game. His energetic pep-talk at the half-hour cooling break infused a new lease of life to his players. They looked sharper from that point on, hungrier to win the ball back and deal some damage in return to the La Liga holders.
Lopetegui’s substitutions should be a lesson in management for all managers, not in the least Setien. The Sevilla manager’s decision to introduce Ever Banega at the beginning of the second half spoke volumes about his ambitions and tactical nous. Banega provided Sevilla with the fulcrum in midfield, and his presence was an anchoring force for the Sevilla forwards, who now had a natural supplier of quality balls from the middle.
Overall, Sevilla looked a much more balanced outfit after the Argentine’s introduction, and Setien had to make a substitution of his own in Arthur Melo to negate Banega’s increasing influence.
Lopetegui’s other substitutions also came at strategically important moments, punctuating the game with strategic pauses to disrupt Barcelona’s flow and concentration. It was a tactical masterclass from the once-disgraced Spanish national team manager. For once, Lopetegui was more useful for Real Madrid from afar than he was while managing the capital side.
Lionel Messi's performance against Sevilla
It is very unfair for a player like Lionel Messi to have to be the ubiquitous creator. As has been the case for the last few years, Messi always seems to be the one who has to come up with a solution. If he cannot conjure chances from the right, he attempts to do so from the middle; sometimes linking up with other forwards, sometimes dinking the ball over the top of the opposition back-line.
Against Sevilla, Messi did not have a bad game at all. However, it was not the kind of game that we have come to expect of him.
Every time Barcelona get a free-kick, we have the unrealistic expectation of seeing Messi hit the back of the net. Every time he gets the ball, we expect him to slalom past defenders and score a fine goal. Every time he gets deep inside his own half, we expect Messi to play a perfectly lobbed through pass on to an onrushing forward.
Messi, set to be thirty-three years old on the 24th of June, must surely be tired mentally of having to do everything on his own. But that is the price you have to pay for greatness. You are pitted against your own stratospheric standards, until a day comes when you struggle to match your own feats.
For now, the ball is in Real Madrid’s court. We must await and see what Benzema and the rest come up with. What becomes clear however, is that Quique Setien has quite clearly complicated Barcelona’s chances of retaining their La Liga crown, and even Messi could not help it.
