Chelsea’s Defensive Shape and Manchester United’s Counterattacks

Have managers got time to be able to, on the training pitch, develop two

or three

different ideas, and have players who are willing to adapt and change?

I agree with you. When we played, we sometimes played deep,

sometimes we played

full press, sometimes we played, um, you know, we played different ways.

But I'm not sure I see too many teams now who are adaptable.

I don't know what you think in terms of what you've seen.

No, but for me, that, w- w- w- w- one thing is the tactical system.

Another, another thing are principles of play.

And there are principles of play that

they have to be permanent. And one of them, and if,

let's laugh a little bit, when you remember your Uncle Rafa- ...

on the touchline, he was always doing this, right?

What he, what Rafa want

to do when says to the pitch, it was always this.

Well, compact.

Yeah.

And there was moments where we were looking at the game from,

from this position here, and Chelsea, without the ball,

had

a block of six

and other four.

Tammy Abraham was staying up,

Barkley was staying up, Mount was staying up,

Pedro was staying up. Nowadays, you look to the good teams,

and all the good teams, they defend compact.

Higher block, lower block. The lower block is more defensive,

the higher

block is more offensive, is more aggressive,

but always in the block.

So there are principles of play that doesn't have to do with the system

you

play. It's just a basic principle. You have to defend compact.

I-

Like

this. And Chelsea was never that. So it was too easy for, for

United, in the moment they recover the ball,

to find spaces to, to

counterattack