- 5/29/2025
Tottenham Hotspur are the Europa League Champions after a dramatic 1-0 over Manchester United. It was boom or bust for each manager, with their entire seasons resting on the result, but Ange Postecoglu's side always looked like it was their night.Adam Clery examines how that statement can possibly be true in a game where they had less than 30% possession and just one shot on target, mate.
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00:00Right then, right then, right then, right then. Hello everybody, my name is Adam Cleary. This
00:04is a football channel, hence the name. And in the Europa League final, you had two managers
00:10we are constantly told are too tactically rigid to ever change what they're doing.
00:16And one of them had made a series of really smart tweaks to manage the game as it went on,
00:21and the other, here in the 86th minute, had not made a single structural change.
00:28Or, to put that another way, in the battle of the Premier League's most unadaptable, stubborn,
00:34ideologically imprisoned within their own minds' managers, one of them proved that actually
00:40he's really good at this and got it spot on on the night, and the other, quite spectacularly,
00:47did not. And I'm going to show you both of those right now.
00:52Lads, it's Spurs, but like, in a good way.
00:58So, to start, both teams did have a game plan. Now, that might shock you if you watched the
01:06match, because you barely actually saw it, but there were things from the start they
01:09were trying to do. Man United wanted to stagger Casemiro and Fernandes like this, with one
01:15dropping deeper and one pushing on, to open up better passing angles, making them harder
01:20to press and getting them up the pitch much quicker. Good stuff. And Spurs, for their money,
01:25wanted to leave Richarlison and Johnson extremely wide to force Man United's wing-backs to sit
01:32deep and thus make them a back five. And the idea there being that because you forced them
01:36so far back, it really isolates Fernandes and Casemiro. So, when Tottenham's full-backs
01:42invert into the middle, because that's how Ange likes to play, they should completely overwhelm them
01:48in that area. But the reason I'm just showing you these two stills and talking about it,
01:52rather than actually giving you any evidence of it happening, is because neither of those
01:56things really happen. For, like, the entire first half, neither of these game plans really
02:02materialised in any sort of noticeable way, because I have never, ever seen two teams simultaneously
02:10so afraid of playing their own brand of football in a final. Like, Spurs are the very poster boys in
02:17English football for just retain the ball at the back with nice, neat little interchanges to bait
02:22the opposition on and then go through them like a bad curry. And yet, in this game of football,
02:28they got rid of that ball from their own defensive third, like it had a timer and two sticks of
02:34dynamite on it. Like, this is them in that first half, so it's still nil-nil. They're trying to play
02:39in theory, and it's just the very opposite of everything Ange ball is supposed to be. Like,
02:44Vicario, pretty much just going long. Romero, just going long. Porro, just going long. Like,
02:51genuinely, look at this. This is the team with the lowest or the second lowest long ball percentage
02:57in the Premier League this season, and there was just, like, no attempt whatsoever to engage in
03:03structured play out from the back. And this is the only example I can even find of them trying to
03:08set it up. Like, everybody's in position. This is how they would normally build out from the back.
03:13Man United show their hand with how they're going to press them, and they think about it, but no,
03:19bang, not taking that chance. And it wasn't just them, obviously. Like, this is Andre Unana's past
03:24map from that first half, and you can see he's not averse to giving it to one of the centre-backs
03:28when they've got it at the back. But when it comes time for him to play forward, zero interest
03:35whatsoever in anything short. He was hitting the middle and the far end of the pitch every single
03:40time as well. So, as a result, either by, like, design or by nerves, both teams just, like,
03:45completely abandoned the middle of the pitch. Nobody wanted to be the one to get caught in the
03:52build-up or to give it away with a bad pass or lose it on the turn. So, the entire first half
03:56became a game of moving the ball out to the flanks, whether or not there was anything actually
04:03on there or not. Whether or not or not, that's just superb English. Now, for Man United, this became
04:10about getting the ball to Ahmad, allowing him to get at the full-back 1v1, and they had a small degree
04:15of joy doing that, nothing particularly clear-cut. But for Tottenham, it became all about crosses.
04:22There was something like 25 or 30 crosses in that first half, pretty evenly split between both teams.
04:30They constantly stuck it out of the flank and didn't know what else to do. Yet, despite this,
04:35neither Rasmus Hoyland nor Dominic Solanke had a single touch in the opposition box. And yet,
04:43as Vanarama a first half as this was, it gave Tottenham a massive advantage over Man United.
04:51We have seen pretty consistently this season that when this Man United side defends deep,
04:56if you make good runs off the ball, you can drag individual defenders way out of position
05:01and create little pockets of space as a result. Against West Ham, this really simple run from
05:07Bowen dragged them out of position, created this amount of space, and from there, they could really
05:12easily slip Kudis in, and that's where they get that goal from. And Tottenham, prior to the goal,
05:16had had two or three really good deliveries from the wide areas, which should have alerted Man United
05:22that they needed to try and stay in their shape and not get dragged around. And yet,
05:27while that Brennan Johnson goal just looks like a scrappy mix-up between some defenders and a
05:34goalkeeper who isn't going to take command of that area, it's actually a very good exploitation
05:39of this flaw. First off, Saar makes this run, which completely pulls Lenny Yoro out of position.
05:46Now, having created this pocket of space here, very similar to the Kudis goal,
05:50Benton Kerr makes this run, hoping to capitalise on it, but credit where it's due,
05:55he is quite diligently tracked by Bruno Fernandes. Now, at this point, Man United are going to feel like
06:00they've pretty well covered this phase of play, but they are now, defensively,
06:04all over the place. And as they're trying to reset their shape, that's when the ball comes in.
06:10Because of the gap they've made, it pulls Maguire and Shaw too far over. Like,
06:14they're both individually trying to close that gap to Lenny Yoro. And it's subtle,
06:19and it's obviously still really scrappy, but just those few yards are what makes all the difference
06:28in this goal. Like, just before it comes in, you can see Luke Shaw pointing at Brennan Johnson
06:33to pass him onto Dorgoo, so he can then step up onto Solanke, because Maguire's trying to close
06:39the distance to Yoro. But then, as the three of them begin to move back into their positions,
06:43Shaw should really take responsibility for Johnson again. He's too slow in doing that,
06:48and he gets caught wrong side. So right here, at the point of delivery, Luke Shaw does not
06:53have a sight of the goal scorer. And the temptation here, I think, is that Dorgoo should just take
06:59responsibility for that, realise that even though he's passing him back onto Shaw,
07:02he hasn't got in the right position and just deal with it. But you've got to remember,
07:07Patrick Dorgoo is a 20-year-old left wing-back. He's not really suited to defending crosses into
07:14the box. And Luke Shaw is an extremely experienced player. So, like, it is kind of his fault,
07:20but I don't think it's his fault that it's his fault, if that makes sense. But regardless of who
07:25you're blaming, Johnson is able to get in that really small gap, get a touch on the ball,
07:29and hey, look, that goal's never going to win the Puskas award, but it did quite literally
07:35win the Europa League final. So, who cares? And the second it hits the back of, well,
07:41not the back of the net, the, like, tiny little side bit of the net, look at Shaw's reaction.
07:46He turns around, and he just looks at Dorgoo. And obviously, yes, it's just all one big defensive
07:52mix-up, but you just rewind it a couple of seconds, and it's one that's quite predictably caused by
07:58good running into the box, just totally destabilising how Man Utd is set up, which
08:03happens a lot. And this goal was, believe it or not, Spurs' last attempt on goal in this game.
08:13Not last good attempt on goal, last attempt on target, their last attempt full stop. They
08:19declared one. Like, you can see it here on the opted, like, XG graph that was shorting all the
08:25attempts. Like, I can't imagine that second half was easy to watch, but what you then saw
08:30was Postacoglu begin to steadily nullify every single attacking threat that Man Utd had until
08:39it finished. First off, they did the thing we're told they never, ever do, and they went to a nice,
08:46steady, dependable, compact, low block. A team that were once set up like this versus Chelsea when they
08:52had, like, eight or nine men, or something like that, was now in this shape in a major final.
09:00And just, if you haven't been watching a lot of Spurs this season, they have sort of done this
09:03before, the second leg against Frankfurt in particular. It seems to be something they're
09:07quite happy doing to grind out European results, but just won't let anyone see them do in the
09:13Premier League. Anyway, the objective here was to deny Manchester United any sort of useful space
09:18or time in front of their own box. And the reason for that is very obvious. Man Utd's best player
09:24is Bruno Fernandes. That's the area where he's most likely to hurt you. So they put legs in there,
09:29they put strength in there, they put bodies in there, and it just killed that threat. Now,
09:34these are all the passes he was able to make in the second half. And you can see, obviously,
09:38they do enjoy such good territory and such good possession that he is getting on the ball here
09:42and putting it left and putting it right. But when it comes time to do the Bruno Fernandes thing,
09:48make something happen with a forward pass into the box or into the final third, there's hardly any,
09:53and none of them are successful. But then Manchester United responded, because if you remember in that
09:57first half, the one area of the pitch they were getting joy was isolating Ahmad against a fullback.
10:02So they brought on Garnaccio, which you could argue they should have just started with, to try and do
10:06that on the same side, to double their best threat. But Ange and Spurs were ready for that also. I'm
10:13going to show you with Charleston's heat map from the whole game, right? You can see how much defensive
10:20work he was prepared to do on that side of the pitch. Spend more time sitting back and helping
10:26his fullback than he did going up the other end. So all of a sudden, Tottenham did another thing we're
10:30told they never do. They doubled up on both of these fullbacks. So now I'm just going to bring
10:36Bruno Fernandes back into this equation. You've got a situation for Manchester United where it's
10:40two crowds in the middle of the pitch for you to play through Tottenham, but also they've got
10:44numerical advantages in these wide areas, meaning you can't even play around them. And this is not a
10:51video where I'm just going to try and dump loads of criticism on Ruben Amorin, but I think you saw
10:56in these moments how badly wrong he got it with the starting 11. Because Man United had 42 or whatever
11:03minutes before Tottenham started defending for their lives and the game was quite open. And you
11:07could have had Garnaccio having the same sort of freedom Amad had if you'd started with him.
11:13But regardless, at some point in this game, Spurs were going to always try and lock down these sides
11:17if that's where you were having joy. And the idea should be that your wing backs then provide you
11:22with an overlap to take one of those defenders away. And while Dorgue and Garnaccio did get a bit of
11:28joy doing that on that side, because he started with Maserawi at right wing back, that was never
11:33an option in the first half when Amad was actually having some joy. So then, obviously, you've watched
11:39football before. If you can't get in behind the opposition down the sides and you can't play through
11:43them through the middle, what does every team inevitably end up getting reduced to? Just crosses
11:50into the box. And that, in theory, is not the worst option for Manchester United, because Ruben Amorin
11:55has proved in this competition especially, he is partial to sticking Harry Maguire up front
12:00as a central target. And that can really unsettle defences. But Ange, given his due, was ready for
12:07that as well. And not long after the introduction of Joshua Zerti to add even more height to Man
12:13United's threat into the box, he brought on Kevin Danzo. Thus taking him to this 5-4-1 shape,
12:19with Papsar now out on this side, using his extra legs and his extra running power
12:24to stop Man United getting any overloads on the side where they did actually have
12:28two attackers. And clearly, you can see, it still denies them access into the middle of the pitch.
12:33It still stops them getting around the sides. No answer to it from Man United. And it just limited
12:39them to just sticking it into the box as best they could, even when they got Diogo Dalawan. And this
12:43is every single cross Man United had after the Danzo substitution, which is like the 78th or the 80th
12:50minute or something crazy like that. They just kept lumping it into the box as often and as
12:55frequently as they could. And the only cross that led to anything resembling a good chance
13:00was that Luke Shaw header near the end. Tottenham were even, even on occasion, having the wherewithal
13:06to drop this back five into a back six to stop anybody getting free. And what you were looking at
13:13with this shape and with this shape is a manager successfully adapting his principles of football
13:19in order to get a result in a really important game. But what you had on the other side of the
13:25technical area was a manager either unwilling or unable to make those sort of changes, no matter
13:30how much to his side's detriment it was proving to be. Man United finished this game with Fernandes,
13:37Xerxi, Garnaccio and Ahmad as the only attackers on the pitch. They still had a full back five and
13:45Casemiro on the pitch for an entire half where they had 80% of the ball. Tottenham had set their
13:52stall out pretty much from the start of the second half that they were happy with one and they thought
13:57they could keep Manchester United out. So they gave them almost complete territorial dominance and as much
14:03possession as they wanted and yet the system didn't really change, the shape didn't really change,
14:09the personnel didn't even really change. So you kept having situations like this where Manchester
14:14United are so on top and Spurs are so deep and the only thing you're going to be able to do is stick
14:21the ball in the box and yet just count it on one finger. It's only the centre forwards in any real
14:28position there to get on the end of a cross because that's his job and everybody else does
14:33different things in this system regardless of what's happening in the game. And this for me is
14:38just the most damning thing of all right so this is a Tottenham goal kick with about three minutes left
14:44and so they've reset into their shape one of the only times they got a chance to do it because of
14:47just how chaotic the end of that match was right and what do you see minutes to go one nil down
14:54chasing a trophy and what have you got here you've got a back five that's been pinned back because
15:00of the way Tottenham is set up you've got Casemiro and Fernandes on slightly different levels to
15:05enable you to play out and then just three players up front exactly exactly the same as they are in
15:13the first minute of this match. The only difference is that now that centre forward is Harry Maguire and
15:20he hasn't even gone to join Joshua Xerxes up front his going up front has pushed Xerxes back into one of those
15:28wide 10 positions it's just all the criticism all the s**t Ange Postacoglu has had this season about
15:34being unwilling to change just uncompromising and yeah yeah all of that this this still image right
15:40here is easily one of the most insane things I have ever seen in a fight. How do you expect
15:48to win a big game against a team that is adapting its shape and its system if you can't even put your
15:56centre back up front with your centre forward if that itself necessitates you shuffling everyone
16:01else around. But I would like to clarify this game for me is more about Spurs getting things right than
16:06Man United getting things wrong because the one time they did force a bit of chaos and force a mistake
16:12in Tottenham's back line Mickey van der Ven does this and it's eye-catching it's almost superhuman but
16:18it's no more of a contribution than pretty much every single Spurs player attempted to give in this game.
16:24Pap Saar in particular who I'm now a massive fan off after watching that he was fantastic like
16:29every single Spurs player put in the blocks put in the challenges defended really deep they visibly
16:36wanted to win this final a lot more than the Man United players did and for all the tactics
16:40system shape blah blah blah said this in the Crystal Palace FA Cup final video that gets you something
16:46that gets you these little moments. So yeah that's why Ange Postacoglu won the Europa League final and
16:52Ruben Amorim did not because in these games things change momentum swings things happen and you have
16:59to be able to adapt to it and for all everybody said he doesn't do that he did it three or four times
17:06in this match absolutely perfectly congratulations Spurs. But yeah that's uh that's it from me please do
17:12subscribe to us here at ACFC if you've enjoyed this video we're gonna have loads and loads and loads and
17:16loads and loads through the summer is your team buying a player we will almost certainly be talking
17:20about it maybe i'll give the club world cup a go i'm gonna need to do something you can get me across
17:24all the social medias still looks absolutely class Adam Cleary uh c-l-e-r-y and just yeah trophies are
17:32nice aren't they imagine supporting a football team that didn't win a trophy this season couldn't be me goodbye
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