Ajax 2 Tottenham 3   Champions League semi final 2ndleg 8 May 2019

 

 

Despite Tottenham conceding early on in this second leg Champions League semi final game, just five minutes and then again before half-time to go in 2-0 down on the night, 3-0 on aggregate, most people thought that this must be curtains for Tottenham.   Ajax, playing a man-to-man defensive system, could not stop the Spurs’ juggernaut.

 

Second half, up stepped Lucas Moura.  Tottenham’s first one, on fifty-five minutes, following up Alli’s effort gave Spurs just a flicker of light that this is possible.   The second goal arrived just four minutes later from the same talisman and now Spurs enjoyed the momentum Liverpool had the previous night.

 

The score was 2-2 on the night, 3-2 to Ajax on aggregate but there was still thirty minutes of the game to go.   Tottenham just had to score one more goal and not concede any to get themselves into the Champions league final on the away goals rule.

 

Ajax thundered one shot against the post in the closing minutes and then ninety minutes were up, neither team able to find that elusive goal to seal the tie.   Five minutes of additional time was announced and with four minutes and fifty seconds of this time elapsed, unbelievably, Lucas Moura again, wriggled his way in the box to score his third on the night.

 

This was showtime as you have never experienced it before.   The comeback, the drama was electrifying.

 

 

Team man-to-man defence in action

 

 

From a technical perspective, this was the first time I have seen a team playing a team man-to-man defensive shape.   The second time actually as this was how they played in the first leg.   I wanted to double check that this was, in fact, their defensive style.

 

I must stress this is not the man-to-man defence commonly associated with football: the man-marking variety of one player from the opposition being singled out for special attention.   No, this is the team man-to-man brand that I have been painstakingly trying to explain in this blog.   And here it was, in action.

 

It is difficult to grasp exactly how Ajax set their defence out.   Barney Ronay, the Guardian football correspondent, aptly described it as:

 

“They lined up here as expected, arranged in the usual roving, indefinable formation, something that should probably go down on paper as 4-something-could be 2-Ajax-stuff-fluid-here-Tadic”.

 

He suggests that Ajax seem to be “refusing to play by any standard footballing rules of structure and movement”.

In the first leg it was noted by Edgar Davids how efficient Ajax were at pressurising the player on the ball while Tottenham didn’t appear able to do the same to them.   It was also evident that when Spurs did have a player on the ball in a threatening position, there was not just one, but two, and sometimes three Ajax players around him.

 

These are the hallmarks of a team man-to-man defence.   Players do not necessarily conform to set zonal positions.   You have watched the game but you may not have recognised the defensive model.   It is different but not so different to be obvious.

 

Ajax’s attacking shape, particularly in the first leg, was also sublime.   The second goal in the home tie made Tottenham’s zonal shape look quite ragged.  Once again, a quick exchange of passes soon found Ziyech completely unmarked to fire home and make the score 2-0 on the night,   (Tadic providing the assist!).

 

You may recall Ajax’s goal in the first leg that allowed Donny van de Beek to move between the static, zonal backline of the Tottenham defence to receive the killer pass.   He then had all the time in the world to pick out the bottom corner.

 

The subtleties of precise player positions together with the need to take account of opposition players, is the combined effect of playing a team man-to-man defence.   However, no system of defence is impregnable and it makes Tottenham’s comeback in this game all the Moura remarkable!