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The last four sides standing in the Champions League will be confirmed this week but in truth we can have pretty strong suspicions, to say the least, over the identity of three of the four semifinalists. Chelsea, in disarray on and off the pitch, have to overcome a two-goal deficit to holders Real Madrid on Tuesday. Wednesday’s ties see Inter at the San Siro, protecting a 2-0 lead over Benfica from the first leg, while tournament favorites Manchester City are three up on Bayern Munich.
The game with the greatest promise of drama is surely in Naples, where Italy’s runaway leaders look to overturn a 1-0 deficit from the first leg against AC Milan. It’s there that we begin this week’s column:
Napoli rise to the occasion
The favorites to escape from their side of the bracket are on the brink. It is not just the one-goal deficit to an AC Milan side who, according to some observers in Italy, are as close as anyone to having their number. Victor Osimhen might be returning but totemic figures in their side will be absent after Andre Franck Zambo Anguissa was sent off and Kim Min-Jae picked up the booking that means he will be ineligible for the second leg at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona. It is not as if Napoli come into this on a high either, their Scudetto celebrations increasingly delayed after a 0-0 draw with relegation-threatened Verona at the weekend.
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Certainly, there is an argument to be made that Milan are more of a match for Napoli on the pitch than they look to be in the Serie A standings. Even if you discount the 4-0 loss for the Partenopei at the start of the month, a game where Napoli had nothing to play for and Milan everything, then it is the Rossoneri who shade the combined statistics. They have taken 34 shots to their opponents’ 25 and have registered 4.6 expected goals to Napoli’s 2.5. In particular, their first meeting in September was dominated by Stefano Pioli’s side before and after Matteo Politano’s opener from the penalty spot.
Equally, before the red card last week, all the game was being played in Milan’s third of the pitch. Ismael Bennacer’s 40th-minute strike did not particularly set Napoli off their stride, before and after Mike Maignan was delivering smart saves and being bailed out by defenders on the line when he was beaten. A Napoli team without a recognized center forward was creating all the chances at 11 vs. 11, at full strength it appears that the version of the presumptive Italian champions that has coalesced since September can really dictate terms against Milan.
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Of course, they won’t be at full strength this week either. Zambo Anguissa’s loss could well be a profound one. He is vital to advancing Napoli up the field, only Giovanni Di Lorenzo has completed more progressive passes and he is the midfielder that ranks the highest in the squad for progressive passes received. Equally, in a game where Luciano Spalletti’s side have a deficit to overcome, there might have been a case to be made for trying to shoehorn in the more creative Elif Elmas, a player who averages almost three shot-creating actions per 90 minutes, or Tanguy Ndombele alongside Piotr Zielinski.
Why favor Napoli in this tightest of ties? Ultimately they will have the top talent on the pitch and can fairly assume that they will get a better version of Kvicha Kvaratskhelia with Osimhen alongside him. Too often, in the first league meeting ‘Kvaradona’ would drift infield having beaten his man only to find a red and black wall determined to block the shot and dribble. Milan could hedge against the options that would result in the Georgian scoring because they knew if he crossed it would largely be in the direction of Elmas or Hirving Lozano, no one’s idea of an aerial threat (though he did draw one smart save from Maignan).
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Put Osimhen in the penalty area and Milan’s options dry up. Send Kvaratskhelia down the byline and he can simply aim a cross to one of the most assertive forwards in the game. Show him inside and he might just bend one into the top corner. If Napoli can get into the final third as frequently this week as they did last, and if Osimhen is anywhere near the best version of himself, they might just have the edge in what is sure to be the most intriguing quarterfinal.
Real Madrid suffocate wayward Chelsea
As they carve their way through yet another English side, the gameplan for Real Madrid is simple: just repeat the trick from their last second-leg European game. When Liverpool visited the Santiago Bernabeu there was some talk about how if any team could overcome a three-goal deficit it was Jurgen Klopp’s, all breathless intensity, constant running and never say die attitude.
Madrid’s response was simple, they took all the air out of the contest with measured, constructive passing. When the 14-time champions need to mount a comeback it is all sturm und drang. When there is an advantage to be preserved, they are as tranquil as the gardens of Kyoto. Only once did a player in white make a through pass and their 31 progressive passes was the fourth lowest tally of the season (the 5-2 win in the first leg was actually Madrid’s lowest though in that case. Why make a pass when you can simply run through the space that Liverpool’s midfield is supposed to occupy?). As the pass flow chart below indicates, Carlo Ancelotti had his side play measured passes, not quite sideways but easing the ball toward safety.
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It promises to be all too easy for Madrid to hold Chelsea at arms’ length. An intense team with an organized press might just be able to change the timbre of this game. Frank Lampard’s side play like the team of virtual strangers that they are. Against Brighton, their attempts to man mark the opposition only served to reaffirm the lessons of the first leg, that this is a midtable Premier League side that does not even have the benefit of months of battle hardening.
The very early signs are that Lampard has taken them backwards from the low ebb they found under Potter. The XI is unsettled, as it tends to be when a new head coach takes over. The xG has dropped back to the worst levels of the predecessor, just 2.3 over three games, and almost every attacker seems bereft both of confidence and a clear sense of what they are supposed to be doing. Perhaps the only hope you could offer Chelsea is that if they don’t know how they’re supposed to be playing, how can Madrid? That is, however, shaky ground on which to build a comeback.
Haaland closes in on breaking an unbreakable record
Another week, more history within reach for Erling Haaland. Last week’s goal against Bayern Munich took the Norwegian to 45 goals in all competitions, the most a Premier League player has ever registered. In half a game against Leicester City, Haaland proceeded to tie Mohamed Salah’s return of 32 goals in a 38-game Premier League season; he has done it in 28 and now has eight games left to obliterate the high watermark of 34 that Andrew Cole and Alan Shearer set back when there were 22 teams in the league. It almost goes without saying that such a record was supposed to be unmatchable, especially with four fewer games a season to get there.
Wednesday night probably does not bring with it another landmark for Haaland, though for a scorer of his quality, it generally seems wise to caveat such statements. Looming large in the distance, however, is another landmark that was supposed to be unreachable. In the 2013-14 Champions League, Cristiano Ronaldo hit the peak of his scoring powers. In his first two group stage games against relatively ordinary opposition (a Galatasaray side who were lucky to scrape second and Copenhagen) he netted five goals. From there on he rampaged through three German teams in the knockout stages before doing what he does to Atletico Madrid. In 993 minutes, he had scored 17 goals. Even he could not catch that mark again, even when the group stage draw handed him opponents like Malmo.
One would imagine such a mark would be beyond Haaland, who has missed two of City’s Champions League games already and played only a half in two others. And yet he needs precious little time to find the net, especially in a competition that he has found to be the polar opposite of the great test it should be. Against what is supposed to be top-tier opposition, he swans into the most favorable of shots at will. Last Tuesday’s 3-0 win over Bayern Munich was a match where Haaland stood out more for his link play and a brilliant assist for Bernardo Silva. By his exorbitant standards, the finishing was actually pretty shonky, particularly a tame effort rolled straight at Yann Sommer after nice work by Jack Grealish to tee him up. He still ended up with a goal from his five shots. Even a subpar Haaland is unstoppable for most teams.
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Through 493 minutes he has 11 goals. If he were to score at his current rate over the 360 minutes that seem likely to be available to City in this competition he would have 19. Even allowing for the rest that may well come in the second leg of a quarterfinal Pep Guardiola’s side have already won, Ronaldo is within reach.
All the more so because this is a game that will simply have to be stretched if Bayern Munich are to have any hope of winning it. Haaland and City tend not to get many opportunities on the counter because most defenses know exactly what that will mean for them. At the Allianz Arena, Thomas Tuchel will feel duty-bound, at least for a time, to push bodies forward and leave the likes of Dayot Upamecano to defend acres of space. We have already seen in the first leg what the outcome of that can be when it is Haaland attacking those huge tracts of land. It may not take him long to close the gap on what appeared to be another unreachable record.
Inter hold firm against unknowable Benfica
This was obviously the quarterfinal that flew under the radar last week, and it threatens to do so again this time around. Yes, there was intrigue in seeing just how good Benfica were — could they really test the best in Europe? I suppose we will simply never know. Inter might not be easy on the eye but they have certainly been effective in this season’s Champions League, keeping five clean sheets in nine matches. A lot of that comes down to the continuing excellence of Andre Onana, highlighted in this column last week, but those ahead of him are not too bad either.
Inter have given up the 11th most shots per Champions League game this season, perhaps no surprise when they played Bayern Munich and Barcelona in the group stages, but their opponents have the third lowest xG per shot. In short, Simone Inzaghi’s side will bend but they tend not to break. You’re not getting many sitters against Onana and company.
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That matters when you’re protecting a two-goal lead, especially against a Benfica side who have somewhat faltered of late. Inter’s attack will hardly set the world alight but it should just about have the quality to get a goal. Crucially their defense does not look like one that’s about to let in three.
