Match date: 21 October 2014

The relationship between these two sides is no secret. From Michels and Cruyff joining Barcelona from Ajax in the 1970s, to Luis Suarez, a former Ajax player, making his way to Barcelona this summer, to Frank de Boer, manager of Ajax in the present day, but player for both clubs during his playing career. They are two special clubs that focus on possession-based football.

Last year, the two sides met in the group stage of the Champions League as well, with both winning their home match. Ajax put on an excellent display at the Amsterdam ArenA, winning 2-1 against a Messi-less Barcelona.

On this day, however, Messi was fit, with Luis Enrique setting out his team in a 4-3-3, with Javier Mascherano playing in central midfielder in replace of the injured Busquets and Ter Stegen keeping his place as goal keeper in the competition.

For Ajax, de Boer was without key players, including Viktor Fischer, Nicolai Boilesen, and Thulani Serero. The former Barcelona player set his side out in a 4-2-3-¼-3-3.

Both Sides Press High, Barcelona Better

One of the core principles behind the philosophy taught at both Barcelona and Ajax is to press your opponent high up the pitch. During his years at Barcelona, Guardiola took the idea of pressing to a different level, making sure his side denied their opponents any time on the ball by instructing his side to win the ball back in six seconds or less. Last year, under Tata Martino, Barcelona lost sight of this and their performances suffered. So far, Enrique has looked to bring the high intensity pressing back into his side and they showed great ability in doing so, especially in the first half against Ajax.

Ajax, too, looked to press, but they were given far fewer opportunities to do so in Barcelona’s half of the field and when they did, it had mixed results. They won the ball back a few times, but were usually only able to force Barcelona throw ins deep inside their half, which allowed them to organise higher up the field to add pressure to the Spanish side. Below, you can see the success of both sides.

The problem with Ajax’s want to press is that they continued to play high pressure defense even outside of their own penalty area, often getting too tight to Barcelona players and allowing others to get in behind. The first goal of the match was a perfect example of this. Veltman rushed out of his centre back position to close down Rakitic, who had his back to Ajax’s goal about two yards outside of the centre circle as you can see below.

Rakitic was able to play the ball to Messi, who played a one-two with Pedro. Van Rhijn, Ajax’s right back, was forced to slide over to cover for the out-of-position Veltman, which allowed Neymar to have plenty of space for Messi to find him in and give Barcelona a 1-0 lead.

It happened again just minutes later when Messi should have given Barcelona a 2-0 lead. This time it was van Rhijn who chased Neymar too high up the pitch, allowing the space on the left to open up for Alba to run into. Veltman was forced to slide all the way over to try to close down Alba, who pulled the ball back to Messi. The Argentine eluded Moisander, but shot over.

Throughout the match, however, Ajax’s tight marking allowed Barcelona’s quick play around the box to be even more effective as the defenders would be caught out of position or were too slow to react to players’ movement off the ball when performing one-twos.

Ajax’s Shape

In the first half, Ajax were mostly looked to be in an asymmetrical 4-2-3-1, with Zimling and Klaassen as the holding players and Andersen in front of them, in support of Sigthorsson. Kishna and Schöne were the two wide players. Throughout the first half, however, Schöne tracked the runs of Alba much more frequently than Kishna did on Alves, which left defensive responsibilities to Klaassen. Alves saw a lot of the ball during the match, but was mostly unproductive with his final ball. At times he failed to look into the box and chose to simply float balls into the area. This made Alba a much more frequent target for Barcelona to attack through in the wide areas, which made Schöne more frequently drop to support van Rhijn and allowed Kishna to stay further up the pitch, where he did his best defensive work when pressing.

The second half, however, brought about change to Ajax’s shape. In the first ten minutes, they looked very much like a 4-4-2, as you can see below, with the introduction of Milik for Kishna.

This helped Ajax contain the wide areas a bit more, but also left the midfield a bit more open for Barcelona. You can above that Mascherano has a lot of space between Ajax’s forwards and midfield. This became more of a problem when Ajax looked to press Barcelona when the Spanish side had the ball deep in their half. The problem, for Ajax at that point, unfortunately, was that Iniesta was clever enough to know that he’d be able to find space and provide an outlet for the likes of Alves, who found himself under pressure from Ajax’s press more often that the rest of the back four. Twice early on in the half, Alves played a long ball to Iniesta in the centre of midfield to bypass Ajax’s pressing, as you can see below.

The use of a 4-4-2 did not last long as Barcelona were able to have more freedom in the middle third. De Boer brought on Riedewald for Zimling and Ajax moved back to more of a 4-3-3 with Riedwald as the lone holding midfielder, with Schöne and Klaassen in front of him and a fluid front three of Andersen, Milik, and Sigthorsson, with the latter substituted later for El Ghazi.

Ajax began to have more possession of the ball in the second half, which had as much to do with Neymar, Messi, and Iniesta being taken off with El Clasico in mind as it did with Ajax’s improved play. The Dutch side scored late in the second half after good play around the Barcelona penalty area allowed the ball to drop to El Ghazi’s feet.

Conclusion

A dominant first half by Barcelona, where they could have been up by much more than 2-0. Perhaps with their match against Real Madrid in mind, there was less energy from the Spanish side in the second half and Luis Enrique replaced Neymar, Messi, and Iniesta with that match in mind.

De Boer will be pleased with how his relatively inexperienced side played and will certainly acknowledge that his side were beat by a superior team. His tactical switch from a 4-2-3-1 to a 4-4-2 certainly didn’t hurt his side, but it was interesting considering their pressing in a 4-2-3-1 had mixed results and a switch to a 4-4-2 opened up the midfield for Barcelona. Moving to a 4-3-3 added more pressure on Barcelona and Ajax were rewarded with a goal.

The two sides meet again on the next match day in the Champions League.