How Bayern destroyed Stuttgart strategy
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The 29th round of the 2021-2022 season in the Bundesliga started on Friday April 8 with a match in Stuttgart, in which the local club of the same name hosted Borussia Dortmund at its Mercedes-Benz Arena stadium. The hosts chose a 4-3-3 formation: Florian Müller, Konstantinos Mavropanos, Pascal Stenzel, Atakan Karazor, Borna Sosa, Hiroki Ito, Wataru Endo, Orel Mangala, Omar Marmoush, Thiago Tomas and Chris Furich. The guests also lined up in a 4-3-3 formation with Gregor Kobel at the gate. In front of the four defenders (Rafael Guerreiro, Mats Hummels, Manuel Akanji and Emre Can), there is one and only defensive midfielder Mahmoud Daoud. Jude Bellingham and Giovanni Reyna were just ahead of the Syrian-German. In a three-man attack line, Thorgan Hazard started the game on the right flank and Marco Reus on the left. Erling Haaland played at the forefront of the attack. Just 60 seconds later, Giovanni Reina, after attempting an attack from the right, grabbed his thigh and left the field in tears. Instead, a few minutes later, Julian Brandt came out, who did not really have time to warm up properly. The forced substitution had no effect on the game of Borussia, which had a slight advantage in the first minutes of the game. Dortmund tried very hard, won most of the martial arts, and generally looked more active than the hosts. Only now the defense of the “Swabians” was most often stronger than the attack of the black and yellow.

 

The details and the interesting results

After an active start, the guests took a short break and at some point lost concentration. This resulted in a moment in the 23rd minute, when, after an inaccurate pass by Hummels, Guerreiro for some reason ran to the center, and only when the hosts began a quick counterattack 3 to 3, he ran back at full speed, but did not have time to cover Tomas, who from the right corner of the goalkeeper struck over the crossbar. Dortmund realized that it was impossible to relax against the hosts and went forward again. In the 27th minute, Hazard set up a quick 4-on-3 counter-attack, during which he gave a right to Brandt. But, since the field was wet from the downpour, the fair-haired midfielder slipped and could not hang into the goalkeeper’s free Holland. In the 44th minute, Brandt crossed from the right flank into the penalty area on the left half-flank, where Hazard crossed from a touch into the goalkeeper’s area for Royce, but the ball flew just above the head of the Borussia captain. But before Marco were empty gates. Marco Rose was forced to make a second and third forced substitution of the match. In the 32nd minute, Daoud suffered a shoulder injury, replaced by Witsel a few minutes later. And during the break due to problems with the left thigh, Hummels was replaced by Dan-Axel Zagadu. In the first half, the Stuttgart players ran a whole kilometer less in total than the Borussia players and put pressure on the situation. After the break, the hosts’ head coach Pellegrino Matarazzo instructed his players to press all the way to the goal. And this tactic paid off at first. Dortmund for a long time could not only organize at least one normal attack, but even without any problems go to someone else’s half of the field.