Lille took a huge step towards winning a first Ligue 1 title since 2011 by beating title chasing rivals Olympique Lyonnais 3-2 away from home. This tactical analysis will look at the tactics deployed by Lille’s coach Christophe Galtier that saw Lille overcome a two-goal deficit to turn the game around and record the victory.
Defensive setup
Lille defended in a 4-4-2 that had Mike Maignan in goal, Zeki Çelik at right-back, José Fonte and Sven Botman as centre-backs and Domagoj Bradarić at left-back. Jonathan Ikoné started as the right winger with Boubakary Soumaré and Benjamin André in central midfield and Renato Sanches on the left. The Canadian Jonathan David started up front with Burak Yilmaz.
As we can see in the image below, Lille defended in a very compact and narrow shape. Note the positioning of the back-four; they’re all on alert and side on to be able to deal with a pass in behind them. This type of body shape is crucial for defenders in a team that tries to play a high line. As such, Lille compress the space Lyon has to play in and are also ready to deal with passes into depth.
Lille’s compact 4-4-2 out of possession.
The image below also highlights the compactness of Lille’s defensive setup. The defensive system is ball-oriented, as we can see in the following scene that begins in this image. Sanches (in the centre circle) remains in position and does not move up to mark the Lyon player in front of him. Instead, he waits for the ball to be played there before going to press.
Sanches in the centre circle keeps his position and prepares to press the Lyon player about to receive.
Now, Sanches has moved up to press while the other three midfielders cover him.
Sanches has now gone to press after the Lyon player received the ball.
Around their own penalty area, Lille’s shape was even more compact. The compactness prevented passes through the lines of their shape and forced Lyon wide, which Lille were happy to allow since Botman and Fonte excelled in the air when crosses came into the box.
When the ball eventually entered the wide areas, Lille would defend as highlighted below. Thus, the full-back went out to press the Lyon player whilst the ball-near winger provided cover on the inside and the ball-near centre-back dealt with the space behind the full-back.
Here, Çelik moves out to press with Fonte defending the space behind the right-back and Ikoné providing cover inside.
The only issue Lille had defensively was when Lyon managed to move the two centre-backs out of position. In the image below, exactly that happens. Here, Fonte (yellow) has been lured out of the defensive line as Lille try to deal with a Lyon counter-attack. Lyon exploit that by doubling up on Botman with one player attacking the space Fonte has vacated, attracting Botman to that side. In turn, that means Botman leaves the space he would normally defend, which allows Memphis Depaty to lift the ball to Slimani who missed a great chance to score.
Here, Botman has to make a decision and optss to go with the first run, leaving Slimani unmarked and through on goal.
Lyon’s opening goal also came from luring the centre-backs out of position, by getting Botman to defend wide and then attacking the space he vacated in the centre. This happened on very few occasions, though, as Lille mostly defended really well.
Positional structures
Lille were great to watch in possession. Their overall structure in build-up was a 3-1-4-2 but the spaces and positions could be filled by whoever was closest, as I will detail later. Mostly, Lille rotated as in the image below. Firstly, André would drop out of central midfield to become a third centre-back, leaving Soumaré as a single pivot. Secondly, the two wingers, Sanches and Ikoné would move into central areas, becoming two advanced central midfielders. Thirdly, those movements allowed for Lille’s full-backs to push very high and provide maximum width.
Lille’s attacking rotations: André dropped into the first line, Ikoné and Sanches into midfield and full-backs high.
The below image highlights these rotations again. Crucially, Lille’s strikers always, always, looked to run into the space behind Lyon’s defence. These runs served the function of stretching Lyon’s defensive shape, creating more space in central areas for Lille’s midfielders to exploit.
David and Yilmaz always looked to stretch Lyon’s defensive shape.
This willingness to run into depth created space centrally, which Lille used well. Often, they would create depth within their positional structure by having Ikoné start high and then drop into space. As such, he was very difficult to pick up since he often appeared behind the back of the Lyon midfielders. Additionally, his central position gave André two options to progress the ball with Çelik wide and Ikoné central.
Another key aspect of Lille’s positional play was their ability to create free players behind Lyon’s midfield. This was done through the central positioning of their wide players, Sanches and Ikoné, which helped Lille to overload Lyon’s midfielders. In the image below, we can see Sanches appearing from Lucas Paquetá’s blindside to receive from Soumaré. Crucially, the players arrive in these spaces, rather than standing in them. Note the positioning of Ikoné in-between two Lyon players too.
Sanches receives between the lines while Ikoné’s position occupies two Lyon midfielders.
Then, as the Lyon player has to press Sanches, the Portuguese playmaker plays the ball into Ikoné, who can receive in plenty of space behind Lyon’s midfield.
The central positioning of Lille’s “wingers” naturally made for a very narrow front four. This also caused Lyon problems since the combination play between these four looked very good. Around these, Lille set up as below to prevent counter-attacks. André moved back into midfield when the ball was higher and formed a double pivot with Sangaré (both red) while the ball-far full-back tucked inside (yellow).
Lille’s rest defence behind the front four (and advanced left-back here).
In the second half, Lille also made use of different positional structures. In the image below, André acts as a single pivot, Sangaré has moved left, Sanches has moved inside as a situational number 10 and Ikoné acts as a right-sided central midfielder, creating a diamond in midfield.
We can see another example of this diamond in midfield here but with Ikoné as the 10 and Sanches on the right on this occasion. The presence of so many players in central areas naturally forced Lyon to narrow their defensive shape, opening up the wings for progression, as Fonte plays a crossfield pass to the advanced left-back Reinildo Mandava (second-half substitute, just out of shot here).
Another intriguing aspect of Lille’s positional play in the second half was their staggering of their midfield players on four different horizontal lines. Jonathan Bamba was introduced to replace André in the second half, which meant Sanches moved into central midfield. This resulted in Sanches often dropping in as the deepest midfielder, with Soumaré slightly forward of him to the left. Thus, they made up the first two lines. Ikoné was often positioned on the third, while Bamba occupied the fourth.
Lille’s staggering of central players on different horizontal lines.
This setup allowed for vertical passing options and up-back-through combinations to find a free man behind Lyon’s midfield. The below image is a continuation of the image above where Sanches plays it from line 1 to Ikoné on line 3 (up), Ikone then lays it back to Soumaré on line 2 (back) before Soumaré splits Lyon’s midfield to release Bamba on line 4 (through).
Lille’s midfield staggering.
Finally, when Lille got players turned facing forward between the lines of Lyon’s defence and midfield, like Bamba below, they would attack the space behind Lyon’s defence aggressively with runs from the strikers and the full-backs.
Lille always looked to attack the space behind Lyon’s defence when they had players facing forward.
As you have learned by now, Lille displayed a fascinating style of positional play to constantly test Lyon’s defence and ultimately turn the game around.
Positional flexibility
So, I have looked at the positional structures Lille used but I have only touched on positional flexibility briefly. This is what makes them even more interesting since they were never static in positions but would instead routinely rotate in and out of spaces. As such, they looked very flexible and fluid and proved tough to deal with.
The image below highlights one example of this positional flexibility. Here, Sanches (yellow) has dropped in as the pivot with André in the situational back-three. As a result, Soumaré (red, close to the referee) has moved towards the left, where Sanches was, and will push into the space between the lines Sanches normally occupied.
Sanches and Soumaré has swapped positions. Note the narrow positioning of Lille’s front-three here, with Ikoné (white) joining David and Yilmaz.
Similarly, the image below highlights an instance of Sanches occupying width, which the left-back would normally do. Here, however, Mandava moved into central areas to balance the movement of Sanches.
Sanches (yellow) maintains width while Mandava has taken his position in central areas.
In the image below, André (yellow) has dropped in between the centre-backs and Sanches (red) then replaces him as the pivot, with Soumaré reacting and pushing higher.
All in all, Lille were very fluid in possession and this was an important part of their ability to consistently maintain posession and play through Lyon’s defensive shape.
Conclusion
In summary, Lille provided a very strong performance away at Lyon in one of the biggest games of their season. They now lead Ligue 1 by a point with four games remaining. They have waited ten years for a league title and seen PSG dominate the league since their last success, but if they can provide four more strong performances then they have every chance of pipping the Parisians to the title. If they do, then Christophe Galtier’s exciting, innovative tactics will have been the key recipe behind an unlikely title success.
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