Introduction

Barcelona travelled to the Estadio Benito Villamarín last Sunday looking to maintain their unbeaten run in the league. They faced Quique Setién’s Betis side who have been one of the biggest entertainers in Europe this season, and come into this game off the back of two big wins – 5-3 and 3-2 vs. Sevilla, in the derby, and Leganés respectively. Similarly, Barcelona’s league form had also been impressive, having won their last four matches all with clean sheets, though they were beaten 1-0 in midweek in the first leg of their Copa del Rey tie vs. local rivals Espanyol.

Valverde maintained his normal system for this match, however, the Barcelona manager might not have been expecting the structural changes to Setién’s side.

Most commonly associated with his 4-3-3 setup this season, the manager decided to change to a back-three for this game, only a slight adjustment in a sense, since Betis will often move to a 3-4-3 during possession spells when the opposition defends with two strikers. The bigger difference was that Joaquín was deployed as a #10, with the job of marking Busquets out of possession, and overloading Barca’s midfield in possession, or just filing in as one of the wide forwards.

Real Betis’ defensive setup

Setién paid respects to the quality of Barcelona by setting up to entirely man-mark the opposition. Joaquín was tasked with Busquets, Tello and Léon marked the centre-halves, Durmisi and Francis marked their opposite full-backs, Guardado and Fabián occupied Rakitić and Roberto/Gomes, whilst the three centre-backs took up the two strikers plus the spare midfielder.

This setup was particularly successful against Barcelona from goal kicks, or when ter Stegen had possession of the ball. With every Betis player tight to their man, the goalkeeper had no options when playing out. As a result, the German often looked to loft it into the most advanced players who could try to win the aerial battles, however, since the Betis markers in midfield were still goal-side, they could easily claim the second balls that dropped down after. With the visitors presumably not expecting this type of setup beforehand, they didn’t appear to have a plan B, e.g. runs from the strikers to play off their 1v1 situations, or even runs from the full-backs against the wing-backs.

In open play, it was a slightly different story. Because Messi dropped deep so often, Betis subsequently did not have the numbers to match Barca’s temporary midfield structure. Messi’s movement was especially damaging when Betis pressed man-for-man with a high line. His ability to receive and beat his man in any space, no matter how tight, gave Barcelona an instant qualitative advantage in the centre and they could then use this as a way of opening up Betis’ shape whilst creating space for the attackers in front.

The shape in Betis’ own third also left a lot of space around their deep block, especially in the half-spaces, as it was only Guardado and Fabián’s job to patrol the space in front of the back-line.

Despite surrendering this space, they generally coped well with any pressure and any forward attempts from Barcelona. The key vulnerabilities here were the 1v1 situations on the flanks. With Francis and Durmisi having to push up towards Alba and Semedo respectively, they were liable to the full-backs’ turns of pace and the positional superiorities they thus created. Alba took advantage of this on a few occasions but was mostly unsuccessful with the ball once he had claimed it past Francis.

Of course, there are plenty of methods of dismarking against sides that opt to man-mark and, although it took a while for Barcelona to get into the groove of using these, they did so with some success. Luis Suárez was brilliant in the first half at using his body in 1v1s and also at give-and-go exchanges with nearby players in order to evade the pressure on the return pass, which resulted in open space down the channels of Betis’ defensive line. As can be seen with Rakitić’s exchange in the second half, he was able to use the positional superiority created by the give-and-go to go through on goal and score the opening, decisive goal.

Though, this sheds light on some of the more negative aspects of this setup, it did have a few positives. On top of their solid defensive shape, that held out very well for the first hour of the match, they also created dangerous situations on the counter-attack. Due to the strikers being tasked with man-marking the centre-backs and the fact that Busquets avoided joining to defence, which might have then left them exposed to 3v3s upon turnovers, they still created 2v2 situations on the break using the pace of Tello and Léon to challenge Barcelona’s (comparably) slower centre-backs.

Betis’ approach in possession

With the ball, Betis maintained a very similar structure to that of their defensive shape. They kept three centre-backs deep for defensive security but used Joaquín in two roles. One of the roles was as a central #10 where he would position himself on the blind-side of the opposition’s double pivot, between Guardado and Fabián, so that he could receive vertically through the middle, as depicted here:

What was also displayed in the video above was his second role: to move from the second line to the third. Occasionally this was into the #9 position, or just into the wide forward slot, which would then create a 3-4-2-1 shape, a much more familiar system for Betis with the ball.

At times, this allowed them to overload Barcelona’s four-man defensive line and thus exploit the channels to make runs in behind.

The main issue Betis faced within this positional structure was the cut-off from Francis, who was on the right flank. Because Léon tends to position himself more centrally like a striker, he was often too distant from Francis to support him once play had switched over to that side. The same can be said for García and Fabián who were all spaced apart from the wing-back, meaning that by the time a pass was played over to him, Barca had been able to shift their block and Alba had been able to close the space Francis had previously been open in.

As a result of this disconnect, Betis were often cramped over to one side and thus could not spread play and stretch the opposition’s shape as they usually do. It might have been more beneficial to see García, who had been playing as a centre-back on that side anyway, step up and connect the play in that right half-space as more of a midfielder. This would’ve allowed for more coherent circulation of the ball and the potential for better openings between the lines as Betis would’ve been able to switch play from side-to-side much more easily.

Conclusion

For the first hour of the match, Betis made it an incredibly even contest – though Barcelona looked to be in the ascendancy just prior to Rakitić’s opener – which was decided by an excellent piece of dismarking that made life easy for Barcelona from there on out. Betis might have benefited from the extra man in attack to help create more openings and possibly to then open the scoring themselves, irrespective of this, the performance still showed a lot of promise from a side who have leaked a lot of goals this season.

As shown in the xG time chart, here, the value of chances created was just about level before Betis then had to open themselves up to attack in response to going a goal down. The Seville-based side should take great encouragement from this moving forward into their next game against one of the other positional play sides in the league – Unzué’s Celta Vigo.

On the other hand, Valverde’s Barcelona continue their unbeaten run and make it five wins without reply in the league. They maintain their lead at the top, and even gain ground on their closest rivals (Atlético and Valencia), who both dropped points this weekend. The Catalan giants face Espanyol, in the second leg of their cup tie, and Alavés at home this week.

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