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VIDEO: El Clásico Tactical Review - FC Barcelona 5 - 1 Real Madrid

Julen Loptegeui completely botched the first half with poor defensive tactics.


Kiyan Sobhani (@KiyanSo) and I have recently started a new youtube channel with Naguib Anam (@NaguibAnam) and Kartikay Khare (@kartikaykhare29) called The School of Real Madrid. The aim of our channel is to narrate and animate Real Madrid tactics, history, and other topics on a weekly basis.

This time, I’ve decided to go for a casual and more experimental approach in order to speed up the turnaround time and create a video directly after El Clásico.

Please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter and Facebook if you like our content and consider supporting us on Patreon to ensure that we maintain our weekly production rate. If you pledge a certain amount per month, you can help us pick what topic to do next!


Julen Lopetegui needed to get everything right in El Clásico if he wanted to keep his job. Not only did his tactics have to be spot on, but every player needed to turn up, his team needed to be motivated, and luck needed to go his way. Unfortunately for Julen, none of that really happened (at least for the full ninety minutes).

His defensive 4-1-4-1/4-3-3 medium block was poorly designed and easily cut to pieces, allowing Alba to run into acres of space to assist the first goal of the night.

Things improved massively in the second half, when Lopetegui switched to a hybrid 3-5-2/3-4-3 and asked his team to finally start pressing high up the pitch. But, aside from Marcelo’s strike, Madrid missed their chances and finally committed a mistake that allowed Barcelona to end the game.

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