Just 90 minutes from being planted in a new Champions League final, the draw against Chelsea leaves pending tasks to improve for Real Madrid. First of all, the overwhelming need to improve your performance towards the rival goal. Against Chelsea, the whites only fired twice on the three sticks of the goal defended by Mendy. Both were from Benzema: one ended in the Madrid goal and the other shot crashed into the post. The 'blues' only in the first half tested Courtois on three occasions: once was Pulisic's goal, another was Wener's shot that cleared the Belgian goal with his feet and the third was a distant shot that ended meekly in the goals of the white goalkeeper.
The whites were surprised by the level of aggressiveness of the English players from minute 1 of the game: in each clash they were victorious and recovered the ball with great ease (46 by 51 (52.6% of Londoners by 47.4% of whites), according to Opta data), which facilitated the rapid transitions of Tuchel's men, whose idea was clear: his double pivot (Kanté-Jorginho) had to recover and launch Pulisic, Werner and Mason Mount. The gap left by Marcelo behind him was a real open path for the visiting attack. Chelsea recovered the ball 56 times. The Whites at 44… The lack of aggressiveness in the Whites was especially noticeable in midfield, but it should be noted that their two main generators of the game came after having come out of injuries: Kroos has been suffering from muscular ailments for a month. Modric recovered from a pulled back muscle that occurred a week ago.
This factor was also noticeable in another aspect of the game: the Whites had 86.9% accuracy in their passes, while Chelsea raised that performance to 89.5% (The English had an average of almost 91% in the second half). Eder Militao was the most accurate player with 96% effectiveness (Asensio had 100%, but he only gave seven passes in the 17 minutes he played; his teammate gave 68 good passes out of 71 attempted in the 93 minutes he played). In that aspect, Tuchel forced the Madrid players to play more on long balls than on short passes. The Whites have the best record of all the teams that have played this edition of the Champions League with an average of 92% in short play. The German coach's plan was to force, with his high pressure, the whites to play longer: up to 86 times they were forced to play that way (68 correct passes). His rival was not required: just 37 long passes of 53 attempted. Where the English did dominate was in their ability to avoid Madridistas: 16 good dribbles by only five of the whites.
Another aspect to improve was the ideal position of the white players, especially Marcelo. The Brazilian side forgot to defend and left a lot of space between his ideal position and Nacho's during the first half, something that the English players took advantage of. Carvajal stayed further behind than his partner in the other band, leaving an asymmetrical pattern. Already in the second half, Marcelo was more content. This was also reflected in the midfield, where Casemiro was further behind to help get the ball out, leaving quite a few meters of difference for Modric and Kroos. The high pressure of the Londoners won a reward for their work: they disconnected Vinicius, who barely had a couple of runs in his entire match, preventing, for example, from repeating the play of his first goal against Liverpool. Zidane now has a week ahead to correct these ideas: Istanbul is 90 minutes away… via Stamford Bridge.