Slot, Flick, Motta and De Zerbi: Four blockbuster matches present new coaches’ biggest tests yet

Incredible, isn’t it? Every summer, Europe’s top five leagues input their clubs’ names into a machine so mythical you’re left with the impression it’s carried around in a locked suitcase by a boffin who has been handcuffed to it. The fixture computer, in reality a dull laptop, uses an algorithm to randomly draw up the football calendar, allowing for a few variables.

And yet, each season, some of the biggest games in England, Spain, Italy, France and Germany crop up all on the same weekend. If this isn’t one of the first nefarious indicators of AI’s intentions to mess with us, The Athletic doesn’t know what is.

First up on this monster of a weekend is El Clasico on Saturday evening, as La Liga leaders Barcelona take on second-placed Real Madrid. Then there’s a blockbuster triple-header on Sunday; Premier League-leading Liverpool travel to Arsenal in third, Juventus (third) head to Inter Milan (second) for the Derby d’Italia and Marseille, another side in third spot, host first-placed Paris Saint-Germain in Le Classique.

Three of those eight teams are reigning champions of their country (Madrid, Inter, PSG) and another (Arsenal) have come very close for the past two seasons, finishing five and two points adrift of four-in-a-row title winners Manchester City, including in their 2022-23 treble campaign.

Lining up against these sides this weekend are four coaches who have only been in their jobs a few months — but who have started well.

Hansi Flick has Barcelona feeling like Barcelona again, despite being neither Catalan nor Dutch. Thiago Motta is unbeaten in Serie A having dressed Allegri-ball up in new, more modern clothes — Juventus have conceded only once in eight league games. Marseille started the Roberto De Zerbi era with a 5-1 away win against Champions League qualifiers Brest and hammered Montpellier 5-0 on their own pitch last Sunday. Arne Slot took on the mammoth task of stepping into Jurgen Klopp’s shoes at Liverpool, and has won seven games out of his eight Premier League matches so far.

The next two days present these challengers with the toughest test of their credentials yet…

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Hansi Flick and a Barcelona that ‘only think about scoring’

Real Madrid (2nd) vs Barcelona (top)
Saturday; 8pm GMT, 3pm ET

If there was a single image to sum up Barcelona’s start to the season, it would probably be that of Hansi Flick, standing on the touchline in a baggy blue T-shirt — hands in pockets and straggly-haired — glaring straight ahead with narrowed, inscrutable eyes.

Surely no manager had ever looked so furious at the sight of their team going 7-0 up.

Flick doesn’t have to say much to convey the ruthlessness that has fuelled Barca’s transformation under his watch, and that emphatic win over Real Valladolid at the end of August was a frightening show of what can happen when they simply don’t let up. “The intensity didn’t drop at any moment, and that is good,” he said straight-faced after the game, as if expectations had been met, rather than exceeded.

Such a businesslike approach has kept standards high at Barca this season, and aside from blips against Monaco and Osasuna — the latter involving an early red card, the former some heavy rotation — Barcelona have dominated 11 out of 11 games. They lead La Liga not only on points, but in most other metrics; shots, goals, expected goals (xG); possession and field tilt; duel win-rate and ball recoveries in the attacking third.

When they have possession, the idea is to stretch the pitch while overloading the middle with dangerous, technical players, relying on the pinpoint passing of the centre-backs — particularly Pau Cubarsi — to find the gaps. Here, in a win against Athletic Bilbao in what was just Flick’s second official game in charge, we can see Alejandro Balde pushing on from left-back to keep the width, with Lamine Yamal on the other side, while four attacking players sit between the lines of the opposition’s 4-4-2.

From here, Cubarsi has the tools to dictate the attack; he can go wide and direct into Yamal who is one-v-one with his full-back, or he can punch the ball through the lines, as he does with laser-like consistency.

This pass through to Dani Olmo, for example, takes six players out of the game and leaves the midfielder bearing down on the opposition’s back four.

That ability to switch up the pace of the attack has made the difference for Barca this season, with Yamal himself citing their direct play as key to their success: “When we recover the ball, we only think about scoring,” he told Spanish football outlet Jijantes.

No player has embodied that philosophy quite like Raphinha, already just one goal behind his record single-season tally of 10 in a Barcelona shirt. Able to both run the left flank and drop into those central spaces, the dynamism of his movement continues to drag opposition players all over the pitch.

The graphic below uses data from SkillCorner to capture the potency of the Brazilian’s off-the-ball movement; not only is he the player with the most high-intensity sprints in La Liga this season, nobody comes close to his 153 runs in behind the opposition defence. His athleticism and speed allow him to start runs from deep and tear through your offside trap, as he did time and time again in Barca’s 4-1 thumping of Bayern Munich in the Champions League on Wednesday.

This Barcelona team have plenty of technical tricks up their sleeve, but their most effective way to goal so far this season has been to use sheer forward momentum to crash into the spaces their positional play opens up.

Avoid defeat today in Madrid, and a title charge might really start to take shape.

How to watch

• UK: Premier Sports, La Liga TV
• United States: ESPN+, Fubo

Thom Harris

 

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Liverpool look more mature under Arne Slot — on and off the ball

Arsenal (3rd) v Liverpool (top)
Sunday; 4.30pm GMT, 12.30pm ET

Any manager who succeeded Jurgen Klopp at Anfield was destined to be dealt a tricky hand. Klopp’s high-octane, frenetic style of play was breathless until the last — who could follow the best act in Liverpool’s modern history?

Yet Arne Slot was dealt one of the best hands in European football — inheriting a squad ready-made to push for titles this season.

So, what has changed in Liverpool’s playing style? Surprisingly little.

The transition has been smoother than expected, with Liverpool winning 11 of their opening 12 matches for the first time in their 132-year history, also breaking a club record with six successive away victories at the start of a season. If Liverpool were playing with their heart in the Klopp era, they are now playing more with their head, showing a greater maturity in their game both when they have the ball and when the other lot are in possession.

A patient build-up and careful progression through the thirds is the notable change in Liverpool’s style this season, but there is a refreshing pragmatism to Slot’s approach.

If teams sit off, centre-backs Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate will try to draw them out with a slower, considered build-up. Press too high, though, and Van Dijk can punish you with a line-breaking pass into Ryan Gravenberch or a zinged cross-field diagonal to Mohamed Salah.

Yes, Slot prefers a considered style of play, but he is acutely aware of the qualities he has at his disposal — which can be unpredictable for opponents to set up for.

“(Last season) they used every moment they could to play in behind or deep,” Slot said of Liverpool’s 2023-24 side in an interview with UK broadcaster Sky Sports. “That meant that the game was sometimes open, so I have told them to get a better judgement in risk and reward. If you can put someone through in front of the goalkeeper, please try to do so. If not, sometimes it’s a good idea to keep the ball.”

The return of Liverpool’s transitional style was box-office entertainment at times in Klopp’s farewell season, but their openness in attack became their Achilles’ heel out of possession.

Quick regains high up the field and counter-pressing actions were commonplace under the German, but Liverpool had a habit of being horribly exposed if that press was mistimed: their 3.1 ‘direct attacks’ — a proxy of counter-attacking — conceded per 90 minutes last season was the sixth-highest in the Premier League.

Things have tightened up since Slot came in. Liverpool’s pressing intensity — denoted by their passes allowed per defensive action (PPDA) — is lower and their volume of high regains has reduced in exchange for greater defensive structure. This is most commonly seen in their 4-2-4 shape out of possession, with wingers blocking passes out to the full-backs and a striker (Diogo Jota) and attacking midfielder (Dominik Szoboszlai) preventing the ball from being progressed through central spaces…

…but with the possibility of adapting, as shown this week against RB Leipzig in the Champions League by Slot’s tweak to a 4-1-4-1 off the ball.

The verdict? Liverpool are the same; same, but different. Slot is building on the foundations Klopp laid, subtly filling in any cracks that were starting to emerge last season.

How to watch

• UK: Sky Sports
• United States: Peacock Premium

Mark Carey

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Thiago Motta’s Juventus have best defensive record in the top five leagues

Inter Milan (2nd) v Juventus (3rd)
Sunday; 5pm GMT, 1pm ET

It would be facile to suggest Juventus have changed in order to stay the same. They appointed an apparently progressive new coach this summer, spent more than €100million (£83m/$108m at the current exchange rates) on nine signings and promoted more academy kids from their Next Gen youth development programme.

Still unbeaten in the league after eight games, Juventus definitely look different in more than just personnel under Thiago Motta. Nobody in Serie A holds onto the ball more than them, they make more passes than anyone else and can play slick sequences from back to front like the one that led to Alessio Romagnoli’s first-half red card in last Saturday’s 1-0 home win against Lazio. Romagnoli was the last man and slid in on Pierre Kalulu, his fellow defender and former AC Milan team-mate, after the Frenchman had been sent through on goal like a centre-forward rather than a centre-back.

In the end though, their winner that day only arrived via a late own goal. Juventus’ struggles to break down 10 men for over an hour underscored their general difficulty in busting through deep defences. They have the league’s ninth-best attack in terms of goals scored and have marginally out-performed their xG (11 to 10.4) thanks to long-distance, low-percentage goals from Samuel Mbangula and Andrea Cambiaso. Thirteenth in shots per 90, Juventus are 12th for touches in the opposition penalty area, with Cambiaso and Kenan Yildiz the leading protagonists in getting the ball into the box through their carries and passes.

The summer sale of Moise Kean to Fiorentina and Arkadiusz Milik’s prolonged spell on the sidelines with a knee injury mean Dusan Vlahovic is the only recognised No 9 in the squad. Talents such as Yildiz, 19, are nailed-on starters for the first time in their careers and it is perhaps too much to expect them to produce game-defining moments every few days. Juventus’ midfielders have yet to chip in with any goals this season.

In mitigation, late transfer business, injuries and the overall overhaul serve as silent pleas for patience. At the back, Motta’s Juventus play on the ball as well as Allegri’s Juventus used to defend the space. Their zero non-penalty goals conceded is the best record in Europe’s top five leagues — and they began the season alternating successive 3-0 wins with back-to-back 0-0 draws.

It has, at times, been monotonous and boring.

Since the opening weekend’s 3-0 defeat of newly-promoted visitors Como, fans at Juventus’ Allianz Stadium have watched them score a penalty against Cagliari, benefit from that own goal by Lazio, and fail to find the net against Roma, Napoli and, this midweek, Champions League visitors Stuttgart, who deservedly inflicted their first defeat of the campaign.

“Allegri with new tricks” continues to be the wrong way to characterise Motta, regardless of their curiously similar press conference lines. But a different style has so far delivered a similar spectacle. For now, results have covered up for that, although tomorrow’s Derby d’Italia against Inter, the club with whom Motta won the treble as a player, might herald the twilight of his grace period.

How to watch

• UK: TNT Sports
• United States: Paramount+, Fubo

James Horncastle

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Roberto De Zerbi and Marseille: fire, meet fire

Marseille (3rd) v Paris Saint-Germain (top)
Sunday; 7.45pm GMT, 3.45pm ET

In May this year, Brighton & Hove Albion announced Roberto De Zerbi would leave his head coach role at the end of the 2023-24 season. I joked to a friend that he should join Marseille.

A case of unstoppable force meets immovable object: the passionate, loud Marseille ultras intimated Marcelino into resigning last season. After seven games. That same campaign ended with De Zerbi as the joint-most-booked manager/head coach in the Premier League and saying that he disliked “80 per cent” of English referees. Fire, meet fire.

De Zerbi became Marseille’s sixth head coach, full-time or interim, in 13 months.

Tactically, they fit. The club motto — droit au but — translates as ‘straight to the goal’. De Zerbi’s 4-2-3-1 setup dreams of the choreographed passing patterns that bait the opposition and play through them — it’s how Brighton (under the Italian) beat Marseille (under Gennaro Gattuso) to finish first in their shared Europa League group last season.

It will surprise nobody that De Zerbi has stuck to his principles. Marseille are second to Paris Saint-Germain for possession (60.6 per cent) in Ligue 1. Their territorial dominance in the first eight games has seen them shift into a 3-2-5 build-up, with the left-back pushing on and the left winger moving into the half-space.

De Zerbi might — emphasis on might — tone down the style against better opposition, but Marseille have flown out the blocks under him. There’s De Zerbi’s trademark No 9 dropping in, slow-then-quick attacking play once the opposition midfield line is split, and wingers crashing the back-post with an emphasis on cutbacks.

Look out for Luis Henrique in particular, a 22-year-old who Marseille signed four years ago but is only now establishing himself in the first team after 18 months on loan back in his native Brazil. He’s scored four goals and assisted three in Ligue 1 this season, while operating as a winger, and has a penchant for a screamer. Former Manchester United forward Mason Greenwood joined this summer and has six goals in eight games.

Marseille (21) are the second-highest-scorers in Ligue 1 (after PSG’s 25) while having the fewest headed goal attempts in the league (seven). This encapsulates how much of their football is played on the floor.

Five wins and 17 points from eight games is one of Marseille’s best starts in recent history. In the past 10 seasons, only in 2022-23 (20 points) did they have more points at this stage.

Although there will be concerns over sustainability, with Marseille running hot at both ends. They are the most clinical team in Europe’s top five domestic leagues for overperforming expected goals (by 7.7), with their chance creation (12.3 xG) almost exactly matching their chance concession (11.2 xGA). Yet they have a goal difference of +13. It works… until it doesn’t.

Marseille will need those margins to fall their way in this game, as they have a horrendous recent record against tomorrow’s opponents: in PSG’s Qatari-owned era (so, over the past 13 years), Marseille have won three of the 31 meetings, losing 24 times. They did beat them in the Coupe de France, the French equivalent to the FA Cup in England, in February 2023 but have not come out on top in this league fixture, at their Velodrome home, since November 2011.

How to watch

Liam Tharme

(Photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)