El Clásico By The Numbers

Over the weekend we witnessed probably one of the most anticipated Clásicos since the days of Messi and Ronaldo and it didn’t fail to disappoint.

There was a lot to break down and analyze in the match as both teams attempted a different strategy and it paid off for Barcelona as they won the match at 4-0.

Let’s go through three of the standout numbers from the match.

8

You can probably guess what this number is if you have watched the match.

Kylian Mbappe was caught offside 8 TIMES! Real Madrid were caught offside a total off 12 TIMES!

A lot of them were fairly close and everyone was predicting that Mbappe and Vinicius were both going to have a goal-fest because of the high line that Barcelona play. This has been the strategy for Barcelona under Hansi Flick and they have been doing it very well and showed incredible discipline to keep that high line tight against Madrid.

For context here is what Barcelona’s high line looked like on most occasions and what Real Madrid’s high line looked like

Mbappe even with 8 offsides was still able to generate a couple of chances though but couldn’t make use of them.

.5

The next stat goes in favor of Inaki Peña who saved .5 goals during this match, measured by FBREF.

This was one of my biggest uncertainties in the match coming in as Barcelona had just brought in Wojciech Szczęsny and Peña has looked shaky at times. But he ended up doing really well in a big Clásico.

He had 4 total saves, including an acrobatic one that was eventually called offside. He saved two one v ones with Mbappe that likely could have altered the outcome of the match.

He also had 4 defensive actions outside of the penalty box and I would say he did a good job in a tense match.

50

The one thing Ancelotti got extremely wrong in this match was his deployment of Jude Bellingham. Jude Bellingham on all actions was roughly only 50 yards away from his own goal.

Take a look at where he is in this pass map which is based on passes:

He is extremely deep and it was to try to handle the wings but at the same time allow for Mbappe and Vinicius to run past the high line, I think. Truth be told it didn’t really make sense what Jude was supposed to do in this match. He spent most of his time running around when we know that he is a lot better when he is in the attacking half influencing the play with runs into the box. It was pretty poor tactically from Madrid and it basically allowed Pedri, Casado, and Frenkie de Jong to completely control the match in the second half.