What Exactly Happened in Ajax vs. BVB?
4–0 is a pretty ugly score line, no denying that, but sometimes context is important. In this newsletter style piece my goal is to investigate what happened, and clarify whether or not the result was actually as bad as the score suggested. We’ll start by talking a bit about BVB’s side.
Was Borussia Dortmund actually that bad?
Short and immediate answer is both yes and no. Offensively, Dortmund actually looked stronger for the first 20 minutes, racking up at least three very threatening chances. They were countering well, switching to find the wings, and making dangerous crosses on dangerous runs. Most of all though, they were winning the ball in good areas and transitioning on those well. Sometimes though, the nature of the sport is that things will not fall your way, which was the case with these Dortmund chances. It happens, but the first few minutes of the game were encouraging.
They’re very standard BVB-esque chances so here’s a list with links to check them out.
- 14th minute: Reus gets a cross that Timber misreads, if he had dropped off he probably would’ve had an easy 1-on-1 chance.
- 14th minute: Haaland gets closed down easier than usual, probably the most difficult of the “potential chances” listed here.
- 18th minute: Reus gets another chance on a cross here, but just out of reach/cleared out of his way.
The first goal given up was the Tadic free kick, which I think most people would agree is fair to chalk up to just a silly goal. Two points I will make are that Hummels could have done better on the initial tackle, and Kobel probably had a chance to react even with the Reus deflection.
They defended pretty well over the course of the first half despite giving up the first goal early, but there is a glaring problem which is seen in the image below.
Too often the weak side was way too easy to play into, a combination of poor orientation of ball pressing and poor marking from midfield and the attackers. BVB played a 4–3–3 out of possession for the match, and Reus and Malen were expected to drop back to the midfield line and form almost a 4–1–4–1, or a 4–5–1. In this instance, Reus is missing and Bellingham doesn’t recognize how open the space is behind him.
After the ball got there, the winger was so far out of play that it was essentially the midfielder, and the left back up against the Ajax LB, LCM, LW, and ST. Massive numerical disadvantage for BVB, and Ajax danced circles around the defense every time they switched the ball.
Eventually, this was seen in the attack as well. BVB plays short passes, keeping play tight so that counter pressing is easy. Against Ajax though, it become a downfall in more than one way.
First, there’s a problem of a lack of ‘outlet’ passes that became such a strength for BVB early in the season. They’d play into these tight spaces before switching it out and creating a chance. Here’s an example with Meunier’s assist against Leverkusen.
This positioning in attack also created issues defensively against a team as coordinated as Ajax. They were already trained exceptionally in the transition between ‘tight counter-pressing’ and ‘expansive possession’ so when they won the ball, they had players who dropped off and were able to receive, open, and play out of the tight spaces. After the first 20, BVB’s intensity dropped and their ability to win the ball back after losing it in tight spaces was quickly diminished while Ajax’s stayed high.
Line spacing was also an issue. The gap between midfield and defense was very wide, and in this instance I’d prefer for both lines to be higher and more compact. Keep cohesion in the press, and make it more difficult to seamlessly play through the BVB forwards and midfield.
Frequently, Witsel would be caught too high, or too low, meaning that this space was all too easy to access. Brandt too, was ran circles around the entire match. They both struggled to match the intensity that Ajax brought to the match, and while I don’t think Dahoud is great, it was clear they missed him. Reyna’s intensity was also sorely missed, while Bellingham played pretty well.
Just how good was Ajax?
Very. It was clear that they had done their homework, BVB were played off the park, almost none of their usual patterns worked the way they had expected. For example, a clearly repeated pass is the midfield rotations like this one seen below, from the match against Frankfurt.
So how did Ajax do this? Great question, and it’s quite simple. Let’s talk about pressing angles and shadows! To do this, I’m going to select one instance. If you’d like to watch it, here is the link.
The image above is very similar to the same routine run against Frankfurt, but Antony’s body shape prevents the pass wide, while the midfield is pretty well marked. No worries, well defended, let’s just play the ball backwards, switch and look for another option on the other side!
Well, if only that was going to work. Generally, Ajax’s pressing up front removed the options to return back from where they came (pretty standard) while following the defender who comes out to try and free up space.
You can see above the way that Haller removes Witsel, after which Hummels moves up into the midfield and Witsel drops. Berghuis follows him backwards, while Antony continues to remove the wide option and suddenly Witsel has no choices but to play back to the goalkeeper. Efficiently pushed backwards just by simple body manipulation, rather than any “hardwork” put in by the defense.
That said, they certainly worked hard, and their pressing was a serious problem in the build up. Their pressing angles remained, while the intensity increased, being triggered by the ball played backwards (look at Antony’s intensity change). Eventually this forced a turnover.
They also pushed Dortmund into zones that they don’t particularly enjoy playing in, specifically zone 14, like this:
While from Meunier’s perspective, this looks like a great penetrative pass, it’s far from BVB’s strengths, and it catered to Ajax’s. They’d play these balls inside, and the Ajax midfield would collapse quickly, forcing them backwards again or into a turnover. A lack of good options when receiving basically stifled this attack despite them entering such a high danger zone.
In Mark’s tweet it’s clear that the box is the most dangerous zone (obviously) but “zone 14” is the second most dangerous in general. I wouldn’t call that zone BVB’s strength though, as they focus more on the low wide zones, and the low half-spaces.
So the goals… what happened?
Let’s talk outcome and result bias. Oops, did I say something controversial? Anyways. (Some goals are linked where it says “Goal _:” if you want to rewatch/watch them.)
Goal 1: Talked about it a bit before, but this goal is a) a great strike, b) an unfortunate deflection and c) a moment where Hummels and Kobel should’ve been a bit better.
Goal 2: This is difficult to really come up with a conclusion. On the one hand, I think they defended everything pretty well, with the exception of Hummels weak clearance and Reus’s weak attempt at a block. Beyond that, credit where credit is due on a great finish.
So… we’ve talked about two goals, which were far from a tactical dismantling? Going into half time, they’re down 2–0 on two preventable but also frustrating goals.
Goal 3: This one was much more painful, a complete defensive breakdown that Ajax were able to capitalize all over. First, it’s bad to let your forward line and midfield line get cut through so easily. There was a lack of intensity, and it massively exposed the back line. Once in the box, Haller does well to win the ball and it unintentionally(?) falls to Antony who does well. Can should’ve done a lot better, but he got beat.
Goal 4: This level of passing around the top of the box is utterly terrifying to me. They’re hardly being pressured, and they connected those passes too easily. Switch of play is a reoccurring problem that opened space, before BVB is once again a victim of themselves. Brandt’s poor touch brings the ball back into the box and Haller wins it over Dortmund’s two best aerial threats way too easily. Just lazy in my eyes.
Summary: I think the goal scored by Antony was a clear one where BVB’s defense was beat, and another one was this chance for Haller, an xG of 0.38. I hadn’t talked much about stats thus far, but an xG final score line of 2.01-1.14 is really not that bad from a Dortmund perspective. But this isn’t the end. After the match Rose said something to the effect of “When things like this happen to Kimmich, he gets angry. Maybe that’s the difference between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich.” As a Dortmund fan, this is where concern should lie, not in the final score of this game, but the team’s immediate response after the second goal. They hung their heads, and lowered their level, stopped trying as hard in pressing or in defense, and gifted Ajax a comedic level of control on this match. Football works in mysterious ways sometimes, you concede crappy goals and suddenly you’re 2–0 having done nothing wrong. The way you response matters, and if there’s anything to take from this match, it is that BVB does not yet know how to respond. Is it Rose, or is it a deeper club culture? I’m not even remotely qualified to talk about it, and neither are you on Twitter.
In other news: Ajax look excellent, their offense is intense and scary (thanks Haller) and their defense is efficient and effective. 43 goals scored, only conceding 3. Fair play Erik, fair play.
— JZ
