With the Champions League semifinals this week, let's review what we learned from the last round. Is the Premier League overrated? How does Real Madrid keep doing it? What is PSG without Mbappé?
Real Madrid dumped Manchester City out of the Champions League to mean that no Premier League teams reached the final four. However, England still holds all the power when it comes to European soccer. A knockout competition can produce delightfully confusing results. Kentucky can lose to Saint Peter's and Oakland. The New York Giants can beat the New England Patriots .
For as much as the Premier League has distanced itself from the field in a financial sense, it hasn't distanced itself enough to overcome the"Stuff Happens principle" of knockout tournaments. Arsenal's Mikel Arteta got outschemed by Bayern's Thomas Tuchel, just as Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp did against Atalanta's Gian Piero Gasperini.
With that in mind, let's peel back the layers of the onion on last week's one-sided 1-1 draw between Madrid and City.Of City's 33 shot attempts, only 10 came within 10 meters of the goal, and 24 were worth 0.08 xG or lower. Real Madrid kept bodies behind the ball, gave away almost no high-quality looks and dared City to do something great to beat them.
To be clear, this isn't an attempt to denigrate Mbappé's efforts. Even when he's not touching the ball much, he's impacting everything about how an opponent attempts to combat PSG. At the same time, it was easy to forget he was on the pitch for large portions of the 180 minutes of the quarterfinals, and it was hard not to notice how much more of an overall impact teammates like Dembele, Vitinha, Ruiz and Barcola had.
While Bayern is on pace for a better point total than they had last season when they won the league, a lot of that has to be ascribed to the acquisition of Kane, and Tuchel will forever have been the coach when the club's 11-year Bundesliga title streak ended. And at 2.18 points per game in league play, he's currently tied with Niko Kovac for the honor of"least successful Bayern coach since Louis van Gaal.
Oh, and by the way: these tendencies make Bayern's impending semifinal matchup with Real Madrid fascinating. As referenced above, Real Madrid isexcellent without the ball. Their only two losses this season, both against Atletico Madrid, came when they had 59% and 63% possession. They were under 40% in both legs against Manchester City, and in nine other matches in which they were under 50% possession, they won nine times with a scoring margin of 23-7., Harry Kane & Co.
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