Plan and Execution

The execution doesn't always reflect the worthiness of the plan

Better Call Saul is probably my favorite tv series of all time. Created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, it’s the spin-off of that mastodontic series that was Breaking Bad, of which it serves as both a prequel and a sequel.

The sixth and last season of BCS features the episode number 7 called Plan and Execution. Those of you who watched the whole series know perfectly the episode at issue, probably the best episode among the 63 that compose the series. Without lingering too long on the episode and without spoilering it to those who have not yet seen Better Call Saul (please, hurry up), we can summarize the episode as follows: the two protagonists of the series arrange a plan; the plan actually ends with an execution, but it's not the one they hoped for. This does not necessarily mean that the plan devised wasn't a good one. We do are in charge of our own destiny, but only to a certain extent, because we cannot predict and control every single variable such as the will of others.

Cool, but what does this have to do with football and Luis Enrique in the header of the article? Well, as we all know Spain were eliminated on penalties by Morocco in the round of 16. This naturally gave rise to much criticism towards Luis Enrique, who was blamed for poorly preparing the match. In my opinion, the fact that the (game)plan did not get the expected execution doesn't in itself imply that the plan was not good in the first place.

Before continuing the argument, it's necessary to provide some tactical insights on the game. As expected, Spain dominated the possession (76% of ball possession and 79% of Field Tilt according to @markrstats on Twitter). Both teams gave continuity to what they’ve shown in the group stage shape-wise: 4-1-4-1 for Morocco, 4-3-3 for Spain. Big surprise by Luis Enrique who opted for Marcos Llorente as a right-back instead of Azpilicueta or Carvajal; we'll see in a moment the reason behind this choice. Morocco’s plan was clear and effective: short and compact mid-block, high defensive line, central density. The striker En-Nesyri’s task was to cover shadow Busquets (he’s done a magnificent job in this regard), the two center midfielders, Ounahi and Amallah, had to jump on Rodri and Laporte whenever they were in possession of the ball, forcing Spain wide were Boufal and Ziyech didn’t press super intensely Spain’s fullbacks, but they made curved outside-in runs to prevent vertical passes and to force Spain to play back centrally.

Morocco 4-1-4-1

En-Nesyri covershadowing Busquets, while Ounahi jumps on Laporte

Sometimes when Morocco CMs jumped on Spain CBs, Spain CMs were quite free. Morocco CMs needed to go immediately back to their position to prevent easy pass

Wingers making outside-in bent runs to force Spain centrally again

Luis Enrique’s solution against this type of press consisted in a switch on the flanks with the CM who played deeper as a FB (especially Pedri, first as a LB and then as a RB, but Gavi too), and the FB who played higher: generally Jordi Alba wide on the left and Marcos Llorente in the half-space on the right. The idea was to exploit the off-ball abilities of Jordi Alba and Marcos Llorente to take advantage of Morocco’s high line. In addition, considering that Morocco’s wingers didn’t press with much intensity because they were taking care of that out-in runs, Spain fullbacks had some time and space to look for a long pass, which explains the choice of playing Pedri, an exquisite passer, deeper where he could touch many balls with spatial-temporal advantage. It was at the very least an interesting idea regardless of the outcome.

Pedri as a LB with time and space to find Alba’s run-in behind

This solution actually caused some problems to Morocco in the first half. But as the minutes went by, Morocco took measures and gained confidence, while Spain seemed to play with the excessive calm of those who sinning of hybris know that eventually by inertia will manage to find the goal. More than the initial gameplan and the much-criticized choice to play Pedri as a fullback (though there’s an argument that could be made on how misused has been Pedri lately both by Spain and Barcelona, keeping him away from the zone of the pitch where his most impactful: in between the lines), I think that what Spain lacked was an alternative. They basically did the same things over and over for 120 minutes even when it was clear that they were not yielding the desired result. I’m sure that Luis Enrique has an high consideration of this kind of football and that he believes, as I do, that his original gameplan made a lot of sense, but we know that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”, as Albert Einstein actually never said. Also, I have some reservations regarding the substitutions, but I don’t want to get into this discussion now.

In fact, I believe that rather than talking about the demerits of Spain it would be much more appropriate to talk about the merits of Morocco, authors of a legendary out-of-possession game. They managed to keep the proper distances between each other and to run with the right timing in their press for 120 minutes, and even when they made substitutions everything remained perfect to the point that watching the game distractedly one would not even realize that Morocco made all the six available substitutions.

Before ending this article, I want to mention a kind of discourse that is still not talked about enough in football: match-ups. Taking this concept from basketball, with match-up I’m referring to a way to describe the strengths and weaknesses of two teams in how they compare to each other. After Spain loss against Japan and qualified to the round of 16 in second place, there was a lot of talk about how Spain had purposely chosen to finish second in order to have a more favorable path to the final that would prevent them from theoretically finding Brazil or Argentina. I think these are meaningless discourses, but that is not the point.

Instead of focusing on Brazil, Argentina, France, England or whatnot, I couldn’t help but think how Croatia - though probably considered as the better team compared to Morocco - would have been a much better match-up for Spain. Croatia strength is the midfield, thanks to which they want to control the possession, but Spain is the by far the best National Team in doing that, so they would have forced to Croatia to play a game which is not in their style. Morocco, on the other hand, had shown how comfortable they are when the opponents keep the ball: they only conceded one goal in the tournament, which was an own goal. While in a a domestic losing a match against an opponent with whom you have a bad match-up isn’t that big of a deal considering that you have other >30 games (many of them perhaps against opponents with whom you match-up well), in a short tournament like the Champions League and even more so in the World Cup it can make all the difference in the world, because if you lose one game, you’re out. Generally (and probably in a way exaggerating), I’d say that having a favorable match-up is even more important than having by far the better team overall.