It’s a question that opponents have been asking since the four-year-old Lionel Messi first wandered on to a dusty pitch in the Rosário suburb of Grandoli, nudged the ball in front of him and set off on a slaloming gambeta that took him past three players. How do you stop him? Before the semi-final Pep Guardiola, who perhaps knows his game as well as anybody, admitted that you just couldn’t. As Messi demonstrated against Athletic Bilbao in last Saturday’s Copa del Rey final, when he’s in the sort of form he is in at the moment, even surrounding him with three players and placing another three between him and the goal isn’t enough. So what do Juventus do?
Messi may be a huge problem, but the biggest problem is that he is far from the only problem. Devote too much time to him and Luis Suárez and Neymar will run free. It may be some consolation to Juve that the front three converted 74% of all Barça’s league goals this season – an even more extraordinary record when you consider that Suárez was banned until the end of October – but that says less about Barça’s reliance on their front three than about the sheer volume of goals they’ve scored.
The way most sides approach games against Barcelona is to sit deep and pack men behind the ball. The Guardiola Barça could – very occasionally – be frustrated by that approach, as they were against Internazionale in the semi-final in 2010 and by Chelsea in the semi-final in 2012. Deny them space, hope the front three end up congested in the centre and pray that Messi (or indeed Neymar or Suárez) don’t do anything brilliant.
They are, though, prone to brilliance and one of the changes Barça have undergone in the three years since Guardiola left is the willingness of their players to run with the ball. In the Champions League this season, Messi, Neymar and Suárez have successfully completed dribbles an average of 12.0 times per game. In 2011-12, Guardiola’s final season, the front three of Messi, Pedro and Alexis Sánchez successfully completed dribbles an average of 4.3 times per game.
Under Massimiliano Allegri, Juve have at times sat deep – they did in the semi-final against Real Madrid, for instance – and have been more tactically flexible than they were under Antonio Conte, but their natural game is still to press. That said, they do have a side that is well equipped to play on the break. Assuming they play with a back four they can play Andrea Pirlo as a deep-lying playmaker (and hope his unusually wayward passing in the second leg against Madrid was a one-off) with Paul Pogba and Claudio Marchisio biting and snapping around him. Carlos Tevez and Alvaro Morata, as the two goals in the first leg against Madrid showed, are adept at playing on the counter, while Arturo Vidal, even if he isn’t quite back to full speed after his injury, has the energy to shuttle forward from a defensive midfield line to prevent the front two becoming isolated.A trick, a jink, and they’re gone: there is a risk, of course, that they will lose the ball – even Messi has been dispossessed in 35% of his dribbles in the Champions League this season – but Luis Enrique’s version of Barça is prepared to take that risk: the advantage is that one quick burst can take a couple of opposing players out of the game and so puncture any defensive shield.
The danger with that approach, quite apart from Barça’s front three, is that it necessarily leaves Juve narrow. Both Dani Alves and Jordi Alba would have space in front of them to exploit, opening an avenue for them to overlap Messi and Neymar as they cut infield. That, of course, then makes it even harder for a defender up against Neymar or Messi: block the road infield and they can lay the ball outside to an overlapping full-back, but block that route and it makes it easier for Neymar or Messi to cut inside.
Really, though, there’s no alternative. Aside from sitting deep, the other way to deal with an outrageously gifted opponent is to cut off the supply to him – as, say, George Graham’s Arsenal did in negating Chris Waddle of Sheffield Wednesday in the 1993 FA Cup final. Perhaps it is possible to block the supply lines to Messi: Tevez could play to the left and look to pin back Dani Alves with Vidal in support and Marchisio could keep tight on Ivan Rakitic with Pogba drifting over to cover, but that still leaves the other side of the pitch. Again, focus too much on Messi and you’re giving Neymar a free ride. And even Bayern, as majestic in possession as they are, discovered in the opening quarter of an hour at the Camp Nou the dangers of playing a full press with a high line against Barça: Rakitic and Andrés Iniesta will just slip balls through for the front three to run on to.
So Juve’s only real option is to sit deep with Pogba, Marchisio and Vidal scavenging and Pirlo looking to release the front two, who themselves have a defensive role to play in trying to check as far as possible the forward runs of the full-backs. There’s nothing particularly radical about how Barça play these days, but that doesn’t make them any easier to stop.