bullard
Starting Eleven
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2021
- Messages
- 623
- Reaction score
- 4,249
I would actually argue that having this high posession means we didn't control the game. We are not a Man City, Barca, Bayern type team that heavily relies in high posession to make their game flow. We are at our best when we can press high, make opponents commit mistakes by suffocating them, and have a fast, direct on-goal buildup. We also play pretty good under pressure, when our opponents try to play aggressive againts us, as we have fast, technical, and good passers all accross the backline and midfield (with the exclusion of Calabria, who plays long balls when pressed). When we are pressed, we play ping-pong passess or long carries (mostly by Theo and Leao) to create a scoring chance. When we are the onew who press the opponent, we play fast counter-attacking football. Neither of these 2 scenarios require high ball posession.View attachment 10806
View attachment 10807
View attachment 10808
Doesn't look to me like a team that was shocked. We had way more of the ball in their half. They had more dangerous chances because of our bad mistakes, sure. That's part of why high intensity pressing works. They won more duels which is something we failed a bit at during the game. We did dribble really well and controlled the ball basically all game. We weren't as penetrative in the final third, but that's really been our problem for months now. It had nothing to do with CL intensity. If we had a problem with their intensity then we wouldn't have been able to easily move the ball into their final third the way we did.
Seems like everyone is just angry we didn't play a perfect game. Part of me is impressed that expectations are suddenly so high, but it's also really unfair to judge the players so harshly since they did an acceptable job and got an acceptable point away at a tough stadium.
We had the following posessions for our matches:
Salzburg - 65%
Inter - 48%
Sassuolo - 62%
Bologna - 48%
Atalanta - 59%
Udinese - 65%
We can see a trend here where a high ball posession for us means a worse game. The exception for this rule is our first match versus Udinese. Thank god Masina made a fuckup in the beginning of the second half in which Diaz scored, otherwise it would have been a pain in the ass to score the winner as we have experienced before how tough the defense of Udinese is to crackle.
Lets hope for a posession based Giampaolo masterclass for Sampdoria, that should result in a comfortable 4-0 win for us