How Real Madrid targeted City’s right side

Madrid — Real Madrid’s statement victory over Manchester City at the Bernabéu was no accident; it was the product of a week-long tactical sting orchestrated by assistant coach Álvaro Arbeloa and executed to perfection by Federico Valverde.

Speaking to El País, Arbeloa revealed that the staff anticipated Pep Guardiola would spring a tactical wrinkle. “He always has a surprise prepared. No matter how much you study his teams, when a match like this comes you know he has something different ready,” Arbeloa said in the build-up.

The surprise Madrid prepared was aimed at City’s right. At Valdebebas, the squad rehearsed a simple but daring routine: goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois would bypass the press with long goal kicks directed toward Valverde on the right touchline. The logic was straightforward—City’s man-to-man press would leave the back door open.

“We had trained it quite a lot, especially when playing out from goal,” Valverde explained after the match. “They were going to press man-to-man and we knew there would be space behind. We trained that a bit, looking for the space in behind because they defend very high, and it worked very well.”

The numbers back up the Uruguayan’s assessment. According to HudlStatsbomb data, Courtois launched nine long restarts toward Valverde’s corridor over the 90 minutes. The breakthrough arrived when one such delivery was cushioned by Valverde, who then surged past Gianluigi Donnarumma to finish and give Madrid the lead.

The plan also addressed a wider imbalance that had worried Arbeloa in recent weeks. “We always tend to look for that relatively easy outlet, which is Vinicius, who has enormous dribbling ability, but we have to be capable of creating danger on both sides,” he had warned. “We tilt our play heavily toward the left wing, which is normal, but we have to be able to do it on the other side as well. Otherwise we become easy to defend.”

Against City, Madrid finally achieved that symmetry. By turning Valverde into an auxiliary right-sided striker, they stretched Guardiola’s pressing lanes, broke the City block, and rediscovered the unpredictability that had been missing from their build-up play.