TACTICAL ANALYSIS: HOW RUBEN AMORIM SET THE STAGE FOR A HISTORIC NIGHT

One of the beautiful things about football is that nothing happens in a vacuum. There are so things going on at the same time, causation for a particular event can hardly ever be pinned down to one thing.

Consider the following example. A cross is whipped in from the left side to an unmarked man cutting in at the back post who taps in the finish. Who’s fault is it for allowing this to happen?

I watch the replay and see a fullback playing far too narrow, leaving the wide man completely open for a clean finish. You watch the same replay and see that the winger stopped tracking the run of said wide man leaving him completely open when he should have tracked back even further. A third person sees the original fullback as being lazy. He should have closed down the winger faster preventing the cross from even being played.

None of us are wrong. In fact, we’re all right. If any of the thigns we pointed out occurred the goal is never conceded. While blame might be equally spread around, if the original fullback does his job, we never even have to look on the other side of the pitch.

That is football in a nutshell. Everything is a chain reaction to something. A missed tackle, lazy defending, or even a tactical decision.

On Thursday night, Manchester United completed a historic comeback against Olympique Lyon to advance to the Europa League semifinal. Kobbie Mainoo and Harry Maguire scored in the final 90 seconds to cap off turning a 4-2 deficit into a 5-4 victory and 7-6 win on aggregate.

Old Trafford has seen many great European nights. Thursday night’s encounter will go down as one of the greatest of them all. It will also go down as one of the greatest comebacks in United’s European history. It was also a comeback that never ever should have happened.

With less than 20 minutes to play United held a 2-0 lead. Going into extra time Lyon were reduced to 10 men, yet with seven minutes to play, the French side held a 4-2 lead. Lyon didn’t come back in this match so much as United threw it away.

How United threw it away came from a series of mistakes. Plenty of people can watch the film and will find different errors from different players. They’re not wrong, some colossal errors were made along the way. But the biggest one was tactical. United, who had produced one of their finest halves of football in the first half, inexplicably changed the way they were playing. As a result, they started asking for trouble, and when you ask for trouble at this level, you tend to find it...

Manchester United’s capitulation did not start in the second half of the second leg against Lyon. To understand the full scope of this capitulation, we have to go back to the first leg of the tie in Lyon.

Late in the second half with the game level Ruben Amorim began making aggressive substitutions to try and win it. With just under 20 minutes to play Masom Mount replaced Manuel Ugarte. About 10 minutes later Kobbie Mainoo came on for Alejandro Garnacho.

The latter change tilted the pitch in United’s favor. Over the next few minutes United held 75 percent of the possession as they pushed for, and eventually found, a go ahead goal. Following the goal, United kept pushing even creating another opportunity for Zirkzee.

And then, United dropped back. Not just back, they dropped deep. United allow Lyon freely move the ball up the pitch and play a dangerous ball across the box with almost no pressure.

United respond to this by dropping seven men in line with their own box. They’re so deep that they’ve left the men at the top of the box wide open.

When the ball gets played up top, United’s midfielders have collapsed far too low forming an almost seven man defensive line. Now someone needs to step out nearly ten yards to put pressure on the ball where they will inevitably be late. In this case it’s Casemiro.

When you have the ball at your feet a ball carrier loves to see a defender running at them. They’re the easiest players to bypass. In this case, one shot fake takes Casemiro right out of the play. Now Leny Yoro is stepping up to cover Casemiro. That leaves the rest of United’s defense scrambling around to cover for Yoro. As players move, Lyon make quick passes through the spaces that are opening up, creating more confusion. Players start throwing themselves to the ground in last ditch attempts to get a foot on the ball, so now when Andre Onana spills out a rebound you have players on the ground rather than in position to make a play for the rebound.

You can say this occurred because they were tired. It was the final few minutes and United were just trying to hang on to a lead. But we’ve United defend like this plenty of times before.

It’s not uncommon to see United defending with a back seven.

This is simply how Ruben Amorim likes to defend. Now factor in the context of this moment.

Prior to this sequence, Lyon had taken just two shots over the previous 20 minutes. What you were doing was working. Your changes have left you with Victor Lindelof, who lacks the command and presence of Harry Maguire or even Matthijs de Ligt, as the central center back. You have young defenders on the pitch who have proven to be prone to making the kinds of errors young defenders make. They’re backed by a goalkeeper who has shone to be extremely error-prone, and has already made a big error once on the night.

By backing off and dropping into your box, you’re inviting Lyon to put pressure on you in a dangerous area, which greatly increases the chances of at least one of those error prone players making an error. When you ask for trouble, you tend to find it.

Fast forward to last Thursday.

United played some of their most brilliant football of the season over the first 45 minutes. The key was in how they defended: tough but not overly aggressive. They refused to be pinned deep.

Watch here how quickly United raise their line after cleaning up the danger in their box following a Lyon break.

United made sure to hold that line at the top of the box, staying in a compact block with two distinct lines and very little space in between.

In the first half, Lyon didn’t just struggle to get the ball into the box, they struggled to get the ball near the box. United weren’t pressing Lyon aggressively, but they weren’t backing off either.

United were setting up their defense right around the midfield line, content to let Lyon pass it around in their own half of the pitch.

Once Lyon tried to penetrate United’s half of the pitch, the defenders would aggressively get tight to the man to make their lives difficult or even win the ball back.

This kept United in control of the proceedings even without the ball or overly taxing the defense. United were not running around aggressively, tiring themselves out. The amount of running was minimal as they were content with Lyon having the ball at the back. They only clamped down on Lyon when they tried to progress the ball closer to United’s goal, forcing them into trying more aggressive maneuvers, which often resulted in giving the ball back to United.

There were a few frail moments around the half-hour mark where it looked like Lyon settled into the match, but United were able to wrestle back control right away and tacked on a second goal just before halftime.

United returned for the second half with a more comfortable two goal lead, but tactically acted like they had a very comfortable lead.

Rather than continuing to hold their line high and make life difficult for Lyon, United started backing off. Within a few minutes, we see the defense start dropping a bit deeper into the box.

A few minutes later, it has dropped even further.

The position of the ball will affect how deep the line is going to be. It’s not possible to hold a much higher line in the first position. But what noticably changed was, in fact, the position of the ball. In the second half, it started to spend a lot more time just outside the United box.

That’s because rather than continue to make Lyon’s life difficult around the halfway line, United made it easy for them by just backing off and letting them carry the ball forward.

Rather than engaging Lyon when they approached the final third as they did in the first half, United were only going to engage them within the final third, once Lyon were getting close to their box.

United’s only plan to relieve pressure was to hope to spring Alejandro Garnacho (who is not the most skilled counter attacker) on the break the other way. They managed to do it a few times but weren’t able to turn it into anything, but most of the time they just cleared their lines and then allowed Lyon to come right back up the pitch.

For the first hour of the match, United’s defenders were playing very well. Leny Yoro was having one of his best games of the season, Harry Maguire had been tremendous in the middle of the back three. Andre Onana was looking sure-handed and had made two massive saves. This was shaping up to be a very special night for completely different reasons than the special night it turned out to be.

But this is still a defense - and certainly a goalkeeper - that are prone to errors. Putting more pressure on them for 45 minutes was putting them under unnecessary stress and almost asking for something to give. Especially considering United’s first half tactics were not aggressively strenuous. If United’s first half tactics wore out their legs, their second half tactics - with more counter attacks and fewer long balls - were certainly going to wear them down, only they’d be closer to goal and risk previous patterns emerging.

That’s exactly what happened. When Lyon got the ball deep, United would drop their line very deep, including the midfielders coming all the way back, leaving players at the top of the box unmarked.

United were putting pressure on themselves and asking for trouble.

Trouble can find you in many different ways. It doesn’t always have to come in the form of an individual mistake. Sometimes it comes from an innocuous handball when you’re trying to relieve pressure.

Which then gets followed by a perfectly executed second phase of a set-piece.

Suddenly, things are a lot tighter, and your players who are not great under pressure start feeling the pressure. Things tense up. Players start pressing, they try to make things happen themselves rather than trusting their teammates, passes that should be made aren’t. A whole slew of things happen. And when you add that with allowing your opponent to freely get near your box, it only takes a few minutes for them to find an equalizer.

The equalizer comes from a chain of mistakes. Diogo Dalot, who rarely closes down his man and blocks the cross, allows the cross to come in.

Left wing back Patrick Dorgu is playing very narrow, marking a man that could easily be picked up by the left center back Luke Shaw. This leaves the right back, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, wide open as he ghosts in at the back post.

The cross goes to the back post, where the narrow Dorgu is too late to get there. Maitland-Niles plays it back across the box where the left back Nicolás Tagliafico is quicker to react to it then Leny Yoro. (Less than three minutes before this, Yoro had just blocked a shot with his face. His lack of reaction time may be a bit understandable.)

There could be a lot of things at play here. Dorgu is still (relatively) new, the players could be getting tired as the match wears on, etc. Then again, they’ve been leaving the man at the back post open all season long.

This is simply how United defends under Amorim. There’s a flaw that could be exploited, but it can also be mitigated by trying to prevent the ball from getting deep as often as possible. United did that in the first half, and in the second half, they made a tactical choice to allow it to happen a lot more often.

It’s the coach's job to maximize the strengths of the team and hide the weaknesses. When you decide to sit back and invite pressure onto a team with inexperience on the backline and an annoying habit of unraveling under pressure, you’re not hiding the weaknesses. You’re putting a spotlight on them and - you know what’s coming next - you’re asking for trouble.

If this were a Premier League match, you could make all the excuses you want. Players are inexperienced, they’re still learning the new system, or these players don’t really fit the system. The Premier League doesn’t matter anymore. Those matches should be used for trying new things or players getting used to the system, or just building for the future.

But the Europa League? Ruben Amorim and Manchester United have made it clear it’s “Bilbao or Bust.” There’s no leeway here, no building for the future. These are matches you have to win right now. You have to take the players that you have available and come up with a plan that will help you win today. That might mean compromising on a tactic, it might mean compromising on which players you select, but that’s what you have to do when you’re trying to win right now.

Against Lyon, Amorim failed to do that. He changed from a strategy that was working brilliantly to one that had already let him down a week prior. Over the next half hour, Lyon started to settle into the match, accepting United’s invitation to put them under pressure. Just 20 minutes from time, the pressure that United invited finally broke through.

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, and Amorim is lucky. Mistakes like this are often fatal, but Amorim will live to see another day thanks to Lyon doing the exact same thing United did! Once Lyon took a two-goal lead, they stopped trying to make it difficult for United as they had been doing for the last 20 minutes despite being down to 10 men. Now they were dropping back and simply letting United carry the ball all the way up the pitch.

Lyon put pressure on themselves, and United made it count.

They completed a historic evening with a magical comeback to advance to the next round and keep their season alive.

The win provides a great opportunity for Amorim. There’s a lesson to be learned in how he managed this game, how his decisions played their part in United nearly throwing it all away. Luckily for Amorim, he didn’t have to learn this lesson the hard way. He can review the tapes and see exactly what he needs to see.

2025-04-21T17:45:02Z