Chelsea: Three lessons from Steve Holland’s “Masterclass” win over Barca

Steve Holland explained how Chelsea approached the first leg of their Champions League semifinal against Barcelona in 2012 for The Coaches’ Voice. Here are three the key lessons that are entirely applicable today.

When The Coaches’ Voice presents their “Masterclass” series, are they referring to the game or season that the manager is talking about, or is the video itself the masterclass? Regardless, Steve Holland delivered a masterclass about a masterclass. Chelsea’s win over Barcelona was a masterclass, and this is some of what we took out of Holland’s video.

1. Create the proper match-ups

Antonio Conte popularized the metaphor of the manager as a tailor fashioning the right suit for his players, but his countryman Roberto di Matteo gave one of the best examples. By studying how Barcelona normally play and how they seek to control the game through high-tempo possession, passing and attack, di Matteo and Holland crafted their own way to control the game.

Holland explained how Dani Alves usually came far forward from the right back position while Adriano stayed further back. This meant Chelsea needed an extra player to cover Alves’ movements forward, but someone who could also exploit the space behind Alves as an opportunity to counter-attack. However, they had to do this without taking a Chelsea player out of the midfield, which was already set up to handle the overload created by Barcelona’s three midfielders with Lionel Messi and Cesc Fabregas dropping deep.

The solution was to play Ramires as left wing, even though he normally played on the right or inside. Ramires could check Alves, but also had the speed and offensive ability to run behind Alves upon a turnover and start a counter. That is exactly what happened to produce Chelsea’s goal.

Barcelona’s left back was Adriano, who was more defensively oriented than Alves. It would not have been the best use of Ramires to match him up against Adriano, but it was perfect for Juan Mata to line up as right wing. Mata is about as defensive as Adriano was offensive, so they complemented each other as much as Ramires and Alves did on the right.

Chelsea needed their defence and central and midfield to be ready for Barcelona’s built-in overload of three midfielders, plus Lionel Messi and Cesc Fabregas. The Blues had been playing a 4-2-3-1 to that point, but Holland explained how they needed at least three players in midfield to manage Barcelona’s overload.

They played Mikel John Obi and Raul Meireles “very positionally” with minimal forward movement, with Frank Lampard completing Chelsea’s midfield three with more freedom. Again, it worked in the moment it had to work as Frank Lampard took the ball off Lionel Messi to start Ramires on the counter-attack leading to Drogba’s goal.