Manchester City 2-1 Borussia Dortmund: A tactical analysis of the game

First Half

When on the counter attack, Marco Reus would drift centrally behind Erling Haaland to try and exploit the Manchester City defence with Haaland making the run in behind in between the centre-backs. However they were unable to capitalise on these opportunities early in the game.

When Dahoud and Bellingham split this would open up space to allow Haaland to drop deep and lay the ball off to the midfielders or to the wingers out wide to put them in 1v1 situations with the City defenders. Dortmund however weren’t effective in doing this as the midfielders weren’t able to retain the ball and the wingers weren’t making the required runs to put the City defence under pressure.

With Dortmund struggling a bit to build the play through Emre Can, he would drop alongside the two centre-backs to create a 3-1-6 formation. This allowed Jude Bellingham to push up as well as Reus and Ansgar Knauff. This forced Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo to come very narrow which, in turn, opened up space out wide for the Borussia Dortmund full-backs.

Dortmund were looking to get a player in between the Manchester City defence and midfield line to try and drag one of the centre-backs out of position and open up space for Erling Haaland or even Jude Bellingham to make a run in behind. This nearly worked when Bellingham made a run onto Raphael Guerreiro’s lobbed pass, and fairly stole the ball off an on-rushing Ederson, leaving him with an open goal to score into. But the referee, for some reason, decided that it was a foul, and Bellingham was denied his maiden Champions League goal.